


Forbidden Fruit

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blood, Celty Sturluson/Kishitani Shinra, Curses, Death Threats, Heiwajima Kasuka/Hijiribe Ruri - Freeform, Hunters & Hunting, Literal Sleeping Together, Living Together, M/M, Magic, Making Out, Princes & Princesses, Scheming, Snow White Elements, Threats of Violence, True Love's Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:21:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 63,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21732913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Shizuo can go weeks without seeing another human, and longer without losing his temper; and he can think of nothing he wishes for more than for things to remain exactly as they are. And, of course, it is in that moment that fate chooses to strike." Shizuo has found peace for himself as a huntsman in the forgotten forest that surrounds the palace, but when a royal command demands the life of the fairest in the land he is caught up in a completely different story.
Relationships: Heiwajima Shizuo/Orihara Izaya
Comments: 399
Kudos: 613





	1. Summoned

Shizuo isn’t expecting a visitor.

He doesn’t get many, over the usual course of his life. He placed himself in his present location, in a small cabin that is only at the outskirts and not the depths of the forest surrounding the town by an extremely generous estimation, with the deliberate intention to deter those who might otherwise decide to drop themselves into the routine of his life. He sees some people -- his brother Kasuka, working as a cobbler in the city, or occasionally his childhood friend Shinra, who will sweep in with the carriage and attendants he brings along with his position in the nobility to upset the peace of Shizuo’s life for a whirlwind hour before vanishing again to whatever unnamed responsibilities he holds as a lord. But Shinra is occupied with his own amusements, and Kasuka is absorbed in his work when Shizuo doesn’t make an effort to drag him from it, and for the most part Shizuo is more than happy to live out his life in the quiet of the forest with no more audience than trees and animals for company.

He’s not suited for living in the town. That became clear when he was a child, when in a fit of temper he had picked up a stump waiting to be chopped into firewood and hurled it in the approximate direction of his brother. Shizuo doesn’t remember what it is Kasuka had done to set off his temper; even at the moment he isn’t sure he could have said, other than to growl proof of the anger it spooled out into him like the flame of magic catching alight in his blood and bones and muscle. Kasuka had ducked out of the way without so much as a flicker of concern, which had been for the best, as the stump hit a distant tree and shattered into splinters of kindling; but Shizuo still remembers the horror of that moment, as he stood breathless and panting and shaking with a strength that is deadly dangerous when coupled with his flaring temper.

His parents had wondered if it were a curse, at first. They had taken him to the apothecary in town, who has the best knowledge of magic beyond those who are inherently corrupted by the wielding of it; but he had found nothing to indicate anything abnormal about Shizuo, beyond the demonstrated proof of his uncanny strength. There had been a brief discussion and a briefer apprenticeship with the blacksmith Simon, who carries himself with ropes of solid strength over his shoulders and arms and a smile ready enough to strip away all possible threat from the enormous hammers he makes use of; but Shizuo had shattered a horseshoe in his fingers at the first teasing from a handful of the village children, and that had put an abrupt stop to that. After that Shizuo had turned himself towards the forest, dark and dangerous and refreshingly absent any of the people he can hurt with such accidental ease, and it was in the dappled shade of the trees and the soft rustle of distant creatures that he found the peace he has always craved for himself.

It’s been over a decade since the first day Shizuo turned his feet to the trees and stomped off into their shade. Kasuka finished his apprenticeship, and moved into the town, and married a tailor; Shinra rose from heir to lord, and after long years of persuasion managed to convince his betrothed to actually follow through on the agreement made when they were both children too young to have a say in the matter. And Shizuo moved towards the woods, sinking himself deeper into the comfort of their shadows with each passing year, until he sometimes imagines himself putting down roots to match the vast expanse claimed by the trees that tower skyward around him.

He hardly ever visits the town. The few dozen shops feel a city in comparison to the silence of Shizuo’s regular life, and he has no need for the fine clothes Kasuka’s wife Ruri makes or for the rich foodstuffs offered by the best inns. His own sturdy clothes are the better for their wear and the greater camouflage they give him amidst the trees of the forest, and his meals are simple things, made up of the greater part by the game he hunts for himself during days spent alone in the forest. Shizuo can go weeks without seeing another human, and longer without losing his temper; and he can think of nothing he wishes for more than for things to remain exactly as they are.

And, of course, it is in that moment that fate chooses to strike.

Shizuo is later than usual returning from the forest. Spring is in its last burst of color, with the heat of summer threatening but not yet arrived, and the expanding length of the days are still enough of a novelty for Shizuo to crave the indulgence of them after a winter that felt like a lifetime trapped in the small square of his cabin. He stays out longer than he intended, and travels farther; his return back draws the sun late in the sky, until there is only the thinnest golden arc still lingering above the horizon by the time Shizuo is striding back through the underbrush towards the outline of his home at the edge of the forest. He is looking down at his feet as the cabin draws into sight, watching footing made unsteady on the mud brought by a brief downpour the night before, and so it is only as he glances up for the last approach that he sees the horses.

They are beautiful animals. Shizuo has limited experience riding himself -- the forest grows too densely for a horse to add any speed to human legs, and the sound they make is enough to chase off game for miles around -- but Shinra’s visits always come with a matched set for his carriage, and it’s impossible to miss the difference between their grace and the stoic strength of the animals put to work on the surrounding farms. These horses are sturdier than the pretty pair Shinra has, with heavier shoulders and less of an energetic toss to their heads, but their restraint seems trained instead of innate, and the unbroken black of their sleek coats indicates an attention to appearance as much as to form. Shizuo has never seen horses like this before, and even without a glimpse at the rider they must have he knows he will be ill-suited to interacting with them.

He pauses at the outskirts of the clearing where his cabin is located, frowning at the horses tied up at one of the smaller trees near the entrance. Both are saddled for riding, with bridles of a leather intentionally dyed to a deep, saturated black. Shizuo is too distant to see the details of the saddles, and he doesn’t know enough about leatherwork to be able to tell the signs of truly expensive work, but instinct is doing the work of identification for him without any need for evidence. His skin prickles, the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and for a long moment he seriously considers turning and walking back into the woods behind him. He’s not dressed warmly enough for the chill of the night, especially with the forest as damp as it is, but he can chop free some of the lower tree branches with the axe hanging at his belt, and a heavy enough covering to capture his own body heat will be enough to keep him safe if not necessarily comfortable. Shizuo shifts his weight back onto his heel, rocking himself towards the trees as he looks at the pair of elegant horses, and it’s in the moment before he has turned to act that a figure emerges from the corner of his cabin and looks in his direction.

They don’t hesitate at all. “You there.” The voice is clear and unhesitating, showing no signs of surprise at the sudden appearance of another person emerging from the forest. Shizuo grimaces and turns to stride away, but the other is calling after him, and he can’t move quickly enough to escape the reach of that voice. “Heiwajima Shizuo.”

Shizuo might try to deny his own identity, if there had been any indication of a question on the other’s tone. But there is no flinching from his name, it hits like an inescapable blow, and Shizuo knows himself caught too thoroughly to escape. He grimaces and turns back to the other, hunching his shoulders in around himself to brace against the announcement he can sense coming, even if he can make no reasonable guess as to what it might be. “What do you want?”

His tone is a far cry from welcoming. Shizuo wants nothing to do with this stranger, and less with whatever they are involved in that allows for such a deliberate display of polished wealth. He has found very little to appreciate in his limited interactions with the upper classes; even Shinra is more a friend from his own insistence than Shizuo’s deliberate choice, and he is by all accounts an anomaly in the circles in which he is meant to move. Shizuo is a hunter, isolated even from the population that occupies the comfortable simplicity of the town; and this man is something else, so accustomed to wealth that he doesn’t even feel the need to flaunt it. There is danger here, of a far different kind than the simple physical risk that Shizuo takes on with his isolated expeditions into the woods, and if there is any way to extricate himself from whatever this is Shizuo intends to do so as rapidly as possible.

Unfortunately there is not; or if there is, it requires playing at a game well beyond the direct approach that is all Shizuo has ever used. The man doesn’t so much as flinch at Shizuo’s tone; he just straightens his shoulders and lifts his head as he brings his hands behind him to clasp together into a display of formal announcement.

“Heiwajima Shizuo, huntsman,” the man declares, speaking so loudly Shizuo wonders if it will echo off the surrounding hills, if perhaps there are people in the distant town looking up from preparing their evening meals to wonder at the resonance of Shizuo’s name reverberating through the streets. “You have been summoned by royal decree to appear before the Queen of this land. You presence is required at once.”

Shizuo rocks back on his heels. “The  _ queen_?” he growls. “What the fuck does the palace want with  _ me_?”

The man doesn’t blink. “That is for Her Majesty to speak of,” he says levelly. “It is a matter requiring some secrecy, not to be declared under the open air.”

Shizuo likes this less and less. “Why me?” he demands. “I have nothing to do with lords or ladies or castles. I don’t want anything to do with whatever happens in the palace. I just want to be left alone.”

“Your opinion is irrelevant,” the man tells him. “I have been sent to collect you and bring you directly to the castle for further instruction.”

Shizuo considers the man. He’s shorter than Shizuo himself, and built along slim lines; not that one needs a dramatic display of muscle to manifest strength, as Shizuo well knows, but then again Shizuo has yet to meet anyone who had both the willingness and the ability to stand against him in combat. “What if I refuse?”

“Then you will be a traitor to the crown,” the man says. “And I shall bring you in anyway.” He doesn’t move, doesn’t so much as lift a hand; but the light around him twists, thickening like fog collecting around the outline of his form. Shizuo squints at the strangeness, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing; and then the whole pulses, throbbing with a flash of red light like a heartbeat, and Shizuo hisses an inhale and rocks back.

The man smiles without any warmth behind it. “We understand each other, I take it,” he says, and that isn’t a question either. He takes a step back from Shizuo but it’s a gesture of certainty more than surrender; worse, Shizuo can’t pretend even to himself that he’s wrong. The man lifts a hand to gesture towards one of the two horses with a black-gloved hand; the distortion of magic around him follows the action, trailing in the wake of his motion as if it’s a shimmer of heat he’s throwing off the surface of his body. “You may take the second mount. It will follow where I lead.”

Shizuo grimaces as the man turns to untie the reins of the horses from where they have been looped around the tree. But he has no retort to offer, and no way to effect any protest beyond the frown that has already slid so ineffectually off the other. He glances at his cabin, thinking about demanding the time to set things in order; but he suspects he knows what answer he’ll get, and there’s nothing here of value to anyone beyond the shelter offered by the roof and the small stockpile of meat and fuel still remaining after the long spring. Shizuo turns away to the pair of horses, where the other man is flipping the reins back over the tops of the saddles, and when he comes forward he cuts a straight-line path from the edge of the clearing to the animals without so much as glancing at his home.

He doesn’t want to go to the palace, doesn’t want to meet the Queen, wants least of all to find out what use such highborn folk might make of a hunter who lives in isolation at the edge of the forest. But the sooner he goes, the sooner he can leave again, and that is motivation enough to bring him forward and climbing rather awkwardly into the saddle of the horse standing alongside the other man’s. The stranger is watching Shizuo as he sits up from his struggle, a smirk twisting at the corner of his mouth; but when Shizuo glares at him he looks aside rather than saying anything, and when he urges his horse into motion Shizuo’s follows in its wake to carry him towards whatever is waiting for him at the palace.


	2. Ordered

The palace is enormous. Shizuo has seen it from a distance; the highest towers can be glimpsed from the main streets of the village a mile away, and when he was younger he and Kasuka used to wander across town and to the first rise of the hill on which the castle sits, ringed with a high stone wall marked with drawbridges to hold back anyone foolish enough to attempt an attack. Shizuo has never been hugely interested in the palace, at least not enough to play the games some of the others indulged in of running up to touch the walls and darting back, thrilled with their daring and out of breath from the desire to outrun an arrow or a magical bolt that never came that Shizuo saw; but he still can recognize the opportunity he is receiving, as he sits astride his horse next to the messenger who came to fetch him and watches one of the great drawbridges slowly lower into an invitation for the both of them to proceed.

The castle dominates the space. Shizuo and his companion rise forward across the bridge into a grand courtyard, curving a wide arc before them that spans at least a quarter of the space around the building itself, but it is the castle that holds Shizuo’s attention, even as his reins are taken by a stoic young woman in elegant clothing and he slides himself out of the saddle and onto solid earth again. The building looms upwards, rising to a tower that seems determined to pierce the dome of the sky darkening towards night overhead, and the walls are punctuated with gaps of windows that glow with more candlelight than Shizuo has ever seen in one place before. He makes do with a single light in his cabin, and that only necessary during the long winter nights when the sun retreats well before even a full day of trudging through snow can exhaust him into sleep; the castle seems to blaze with an inner heart of fire, until illumination spills out from it like all the stars in the sky have been caught within its heavy stone walls. There is a young man just outside the main doorway, with an expression as nearly identical to that of the woman leading Shizuo’s horse away as the embroidery on their clothes; he is holding aloft a torch that casts a circle of orange light onto the paving stones, and into which Shizuo’s companion leads them without any acknowledgment of the person offering the illumination for their use.

“The Queen will be seeing you immediately,” the other man tells Shizuo, hardly turning his head as he speaks. The young man with the light falls into step just at Shizuo’s side, still holding the torch up overhead; he’s staring straight ahead when Shizuo glances at him, his expression as entirely fixed as if he is hearing nothing at all of the conversation happening next to him. “It is lucky that we returned this evening. Her Majesty has been most insistent upon finding a suitable resource for the task she has in mind.”

“Sure,” Shizuo growls. “What task do you need a huntsman for?”

The man’s mouth twists at the corner. It takes Shizuo a moment to realize the expression on his face is a smile, and a sincere one, for the way it narrows his eyes and tightens his lips over his teeth. “That is a matter requiring some discretion,” he says, in a soft tone. “Her Majesty will be satisfying your curiosity in full, I am sure.” Shizuo frowns at him, his shoulders still tight on instinctive discomfort, but all he gets in answer is a sideways glance and a widening of the other’s smirk, and he gives up to look down the hallway again with a huff of irritation.

The darkness outside has done nothing to slow the pace of action within the palace. There are people everywhere Shizuo looks, most in the matching uniforms worn by what he assumes are the palace servants but a few drifting through the hallways in elegant gowns or coats layered with ornate embroidery. There is a faint sound of conversation hanging in the air, carried by the murmuring servants or the unrestrained chatter of the nobility; Shizuo can feel the weight of it pressing against his head to throb the start of pain behind his eyes. The palace looms over him, the weight of the stone heavy and solid as a cage, and if he were in any other situation Shizuo thinks he would turn and stride back out the way he came to make his way home through the night. But the man who came to collect him is still at his side, and still holding to that flicker of amusement at his mouth even if he’s no longer hazy with the immediate threat of active magic, and Shizuo doesn’t want to find out what kinds of things he might be able to manage with the blood-red illumination that surrounded him for that moment in the forest. He settles for scowling at the other man, and then settling a frown onto his face as he hunches his shoulders and follows the other’s lead through the hallways and into the depths of the palace itself.

The have been walking for long enough that Shizuo is well and truly lost in the maze of corridors by the time the man at his side draws to a halt beside a small door to leave the servant pacing with them to continue on unaccompanied. Shizuo has the vague sense that they are well within the palace by now, long minutes of walking from the closest exit to open air, but he has lost all his sense of direction for the door they came through. He can tell compass north, could point straight in the direction where the sun sank below the horizon what must have been over an hour ago, by now, but with the tangle of hallways around him he suspects that will do him no good unless he’s prepared to smash through whatever walls and rooms may stand between him and the unobstructed sky. Shizuo works his shoulders, grimacing with the unfamiliar discomfort of vulnerability, and at his side the man who has led him this far steps forward to lay a hand at the door.

“Stay here until you are summoned,” he says, and then pushes at the door without waiting for a response from Shizuo. The heavy wood swings inward, the man steps through, and from where he’s standing in the hallway Shizuo hears him speak in the same clear tone he used upon their meeting in the forest, although this one comes with a distinctly softer weight than when he was speaking to Shizuo. “I have returned, Your Majesty.”

“We see that, Shijima.” The voice is husky and feminine; it sounds vaguely amused, although Shizuo can see no reason for laughter in the present circumstances. “And have you brought success with you this time?”

“I have.” The man’s voice is far gentler than it was, tending towards such care that it’s hard for Shizuo to believe it’s the same haughty figure he has been following for the last hour. “The huntsman from the forest, Heiwajima Shizuo.”

“There is no need to keep us waiting.” There’s a rustle of sound speaking to some motion Shizuo can’t see. “Let us have a look at him. Bring him in.”

The man reemerges from the doorway. His smirk is utterly gone now; he looks pale, like whatever faint color there was under his too-white skin has drained away to leave him sickly and faint. He doesn’t issue a command to Shizuo; he just reaches to grab at the other’s arm and pull him bodily towards the door. Shizuo stumbles forward, caught off-balance by the surprise of the other’s action, but he’s collected himself enough to growl the warning notes of anger in his throat as he is urged through the doorway and into the room beyond.

“Your Majesty,” the man says, still holding a white-knuckled grip on Shizuo’s forearm but looking ahead as the door shuts behind them. With all the color drained from his face there are shadows under his eyes and his mouth is showing the signs of makeup to grant it more color than the bloodless pale that has settled itself beneath all his features. “The huntsman.” He tips his head slightly in Shizuo’s direction, though he doesn’t look aside from the attention he’s fixing forward as he hisses a command past his teeth. “ _Kneel_.”

Shizuo looks around. The room is smaller than he had expected, only as large as the interior of his cabin, and there is none of the grand ceremony he thought would be waiting at a royal reception. There is just the room itself, with a few pieces of furniture carved into elaborate depictions of vines and fruit trees that are almost detailed enough to be as pretty as the real thing, and before them, in a heavy chair glittering with insets of polished ruby and silver, is a woman Shizuo assumes to be the Queen herself.

It’s not hard to recognize her, even though he’s never seen so much as a sketch of his ostensible ruler. No one but royalty would sit in a chair like that, or wear a gown so heavy with layers of velvety black so late in the evening. Her black hair is drawn up at the back of her head, where the dark contrasts against the ivory of her skin, and her lips are such a vivid scarlet that Shizuo can see the source of the style that the man next to him has adopted with somewhat less success. The effect is striking, a kind of beauty that refuses contact as readily as it invites admiration, and only compounded when she tilts her head slightly to the side and allows her mouth to curve on a smile as she looks at Shizuo.

“The huntsman of the forest,” she says. Her voice sounds richer from within the same room, like it’s echoing back on itself with as much force as a dozen people speaking together. “We have heard tell of the exploits of the great Heiwajima Shizuo.”

Shizuo grimaces. “I’m not great,” he says, and wrenches his arm to the side to drag himself free of the hold the man next to him still has on him. The man hisses, the queen’s gaze flickers down as the dark line of her brows lifts towards the delicate crown about her forehead, but Shizuo just shakes off the lingering ache and crosses his arms in front of himself. “I’m just an ordinary villager.”

“That’s not quite true, is it?” the queen says. She’s truly smiling now, her lips curving to spill the expression all across her pristinely beautiful face. When she leans back into her chair the motion carries pointed comfort, as if to contrast deliberately with the tension in Shizuo’s shoulders and caught at the fold of his arms. “You are quite  _ un_usual, to hear the stories about you. That’s why you left the company of your fellow townspeople, after all. Who would choose to live alone in the forest?”

Shizuo sets his jaw. “I like it,” he says stubbornly. “It’s peaceful.”

“We’re sure,” the queen says. “And helpfully away from people. How convenient, when you know that losing your temper will only break a few trees rather than taking lives.”

Shizuo tenses. The subject isn’t one he’s fond of recalling; the greater implication, that the queen or someone close to her has been keeping close watch on the details of his life, is an unpleasantness that prickles the hairs at the back of his neck on discomfort, as if he can feel the weight of unseen eyes clinging to his back. He doesn’t reply, except to go on glaring at the woman before him, but the queen doesn’t seem to notice this at all, judging from the ease with which she reclines into her chair.

“It must be a difficult choice,” she says, her tone soft and almost sympathetic. “To remove yourself from the company of those you love rather than run the risk of hurting them.” She shakes her head. “We know something of difficult choices. It’s admirable of you to have done what you have done. You deserve to be recognized as a hero.”

“I’m not a hero,” Shizuo bites off past his set teeth. “I’m just doing what’s best for the people around me.”

“Of course,” the queen says. “It’s the only choice available to you.” She lifts a hand without looking away from Shizuo. The man at Shizuo’s side steps forward at once, drawing in to drop to a knee and bow his head before the queen, who lowers her outstretched hand to rest at the top of his head. “If only we could give you another option.”

Shizuo glances to the kneeling man, at the hand resting proprietary weight at the top of his head, back to the queen reclined into graceful comfort. His frown deepens. “If you’re trying to suggest something you might as well spit it out.”

The man on his knees hisses, his head turning to flash fury back at Shizuo, but the queen just laughs before tightening her fingers against the man’s scalp to fix him in place as she leans forward. “We desire you to remove a problem for us,” she says, every word clear and cold as a knife. “If you do as we request, you will be rewarded with royal favor in whatever form you desire. A title, land, gold…” Her fingers curl to a fist against the man’s hair. “...Magic.”

Shizuo frowns. “What?”

“Your inhuman strength,” the queen says, loosening her hold to ruffle idly against the strands she held in a fist a moment before. “It has kept you from your family, from your village, from the home you could have. It is an accident of fate; but accidents can be corrected.” Her hand slides to the back of the man’s neck. “Surely you know what magic can do.”

“Yeah,” Shizuo says. “It comes with a price.”

“Which we are negotiating now,” the queen says smoothly. “Do you want to be freed of the burden you have carried all your life, Heiwajima Shizuo?”

Shizuo hesitates, unwilling to give voice to the admission that is threatening the back of his tongue. The queen watches his face, her head still angled just slightly to the side, her lips blood-red and curved on a smile as her fingers stroke through the hair of the man before her with as much attention as one might show to a familiar pet. The silence stretches long and pointed, until finally the queen takes a breath and lifts her brows into a deliberate arch.

“You would do well to consider the consequences of refusal,” she says. “You are afraid of the effect of magic meant to help. Perhaps you might be better persuaded by contemplating what might be achieved with a different intent.” She lifts her chin. “And a different subject.”

“Yeah,” the kneeling man says, breaking his silence for the first time since he came forward. He tips his head to glare at Shizuo from beneath the shadow of his tousled hair. “How  _ is _ your dear brother lately?”

Shizuo’s blood runs cold, his jaw tightens. “If you  _ dare_\--” he says, his hands tightening to fists as he takes a step forward; and there is a flash of crimson, and the air hardens around him to fix him in place. Shizuo pushes against the resistance, his arms flexing hard against the shimmer around him, but this hold is tighter than what the other man managed with his hand, and Shizuo only succeeds in shifting himself by a few inches before being pushed back to his original location. There is quiet in the room for a moment, as both the queen and the man at her feet watch Shizuo struggle; then Shizuo gives way, going still as he contents himself with glaring silent fury at the queen before him.

She just watches him, her smile lingering at her lips as she waits with evident patience until Shizuo has eased the fists at his sides. It’s only then that she draws breath to speak again, in a tone as calm as what she used before. “Are you ready to hear our proposition now?” Shizuo doesn’t answer aloud, but his furious silence fails to so much as glance off the queen’s self-assured confidence. She just goes on speaking as if he had given an affirmative.

“It’s a little thing, really. We’re not asking for you to betray your family or even anyone you know. We just need you to deal with a problem for us.”

“What problem?” Shizuo grates out past the set of his teeth.

“An heir,” the queen says at once. “We have a...cousin. A prince, by right of blood, next in line for the throne in the event of our own demise.” Her chin comes up, her mouth sets. There is no trace of a smile there now. “We have certainty he intends such to be more untimely than otherwise. He is a traitor to the crown and dangerously unbalanced; his rule would lead to the destruction of the country, should his schemes come to fruition.” She tips her head to the side to pull her gaze away from Shizuo and set it at the corner of the room instead. Her mouth tightens. “Our concerns for the country’s future have become too great to be ignored. Should he be permitted to continue his plots, the lives of everyone in the land will be no more than playthings for his games.”

Shizuo growls disgust. “So you’re going to  _ kill _ him?”

The queen’s head snaps back around. “Our position forces us to difficult decisions,” she says sharply. “We would think  _ you _ would be able to understand that.”

“I understand that you want me to murder someone for you.”

“A  _ dangerous _ man,” the queen says. “A man who couples the power of his birthright to a charisma that can charm even his worst enemy, if he choose to turn it on them. If you fear for the safety of your family from us, you should bear that fear tenfold towards him.”

“You’re just  _ talking_,” Shizuo growls. “You can say anything you want and I’m just supposed to take your word for it?”

The queen meets his gaze levelly. “Of course not,” she says. Shizuo blinks, startled in spite of himself by this immediate reply. The queen’s chin lifts, her gaze fixes him. “You may certainly make the decision yourself. We grant you free rein in the palace and total freedom to meet our cousin. After you have done so you may determine for yourself whether you wish to take our offer or...not.” She looks back down to the man before her. “Let him go, Shijima.”

The air around Shizuo softens again, freeing him to motion. He doesn’t move, even with the option to do so, just stands still staring as the queen looks back to him.

“We request that you stay in the palace for the night,” she says. “You will be provided with rooms and a meal and clothes, should you wish. We will arrange for a meeting with you and our cousin tomorrow morning.” She presses against the hand she has resting at the arm of her chair and rises in a graceful spill of skirts. Shizuo stands taller than her by inches, but the lift of her chin carries the implication of far more height than she displays, a self-assurance that makes her relaxed stance stand in stark contrast to Shizuo’s hunched shoulders. “And you may give us your answer then.” She lifts her hand from where it is still resting at the top of the man’s head and he rises to his feet at once, dropping into a bow before turning to scowl at Shizuo. Shizuo ignores him in favor of staring at the queen, looking for some further sign of emotion in her face; but she just watches him, her expression as perfectly composed as her appearance, until the tug of a hold on his sleeve urges Shizuo back through the door and from the room.


	3. Introduced

“I’m not killing anyone,” Shizuo says as soon as the door to his assigned quarters in the palace comes open. It’s the same man who first met him standing in the doorway, looking as polished and cool as he did in the clearing around Shizuo’s home; if he has rested since he deposited Shizuo here with a statement to sleep well that was as much a demand as a request, he has long since smoothed away the disarray that must bring to his hair and clothes. He looks like a statue, his face painted and clothes crisp and his gaze just as icily distant as it was in the forest.

Shizuo feels far less so. He hasn’t slept, not from a petty desire to ignore the near-command he was given as much as from stress too tight-wound to let him so much as lie down across the sumptuous bed made up for him. He has spent the night pacing across the confines of his quarters, feeling trapped in spite of a room for one person as expansive as those he has seen for dozens, while his temper ground at his set teeth and his hands worked on fists with nowhere to go. There are clothes laid out for him too, spread to elegance over a chair in the far corner; Shizuo has ignored those as thoroughly as the bed in favor of keeping his own, however dirt-stained and much-mended they may be. He wants nothing to do with this palace or the people within it, wants no part of whatever political scheme the queen and her followers may be intending, and even the unsubtle threat to the people he most cares about is hardly going to be enough to move his hand. He’s a hunter, not a killer, and he can see no situation in which the demands of the crown will be enough to change that.

The man in the doorway doesn’t give Shizuo the satisfaction of so much as blinking at this statement. He looks unsurprised, or maybe unresponsive, as if he is simply deaf to Shizuo’s words entirely. “Her Majesty has made arrangements for the meeting she promised you,” he says. His gaze flickers over Shizuo’s unchanged clothing and the corner of his mouth tightens, but he doesn’t make any overt comment upon it. “If you would accompany me.”

“Fine,” Shizuo says, and gets to his feet to stride back across the space of the room for what he sincerely hopes is the last time. “I’m still not going to kill anyone.”

The man turns aside as Shizuo comes to the door. “Let us meet the prince,” he says. Shizuo can’t see his face with the other’s back turned to him, but he thinks there might be a suggestion of tension under the man’s words, though whether stress or amusement is impossible to determine. “And we shall see.”

They don’t speak further as they move down the hallway. Shizuo doesn’t care enough to get into a fight with this stranger about his own principles, especially not when he can imagine the smirking condescension he’ll be met with; but he’s trapped by the maze of the palace corridors, too ensconced in the queen’s territory to find his way out again, and under the circumstances he thinks his best approach will be to follow the other man to wherever it is the royal orders have commanded him. He need do nothing, regardless of what the man in front of him or even the queen herself demands, and if he can be led to some place closer to the outside walls of the palace he can far better find his way clear of the looming weight of stone over and around him.

It takes some time to get to where they are bound. The man leading Shizuo takes turn after turn in such long, serpentine sequence that Shizuo thinks about protesting the foolishness of looping back on their own path just to obfuscate their route. But they seem to be moving towards the west, however circuitous the path, and as long as their overall heading remains constant Shizuo will eventually come free of the castle. So he sets his jaw on his silent frustration, and contents himself with glowering at the other man’s shoulders, and after picking their way through a dozen tangled corridors Shizuo finds himself rewarded by the suggestion of fresh air penetrating into the reach of the hallways where they are walking.

They have farther yet to go. It’s another ten minutes before they are emerging from the cage of the palace into a courtyard left open to the sky overhead, but the time is more pleasantly passed when Shizuo can feel the approach of fresher air with every step. Even the corridors seem to cut more cleanly across the distance, continuing for long, uninterrupted spans, until when they turn the last corner Shizuo can see the bright of morning sunlight spilling around the edges of the door at the other end. He takes the lead from there, striding forward without consideration for the man maintaining a steady pace behind him, until when he reaches to brace his palms against the doors and shove them open it is with enough relief that he has the start of almost a smile against his lips without even thinking about it.

The light is blinding at the first moment. The palace corridors are well-lit, illuminated with the excess of torches that Shizuo saw last night, but without the slow increase of daybreak to ease his sight Shizuo’s vision burns at the sudden crisp edge of the sunlight that hits his eyes in the first moment of pushing at the doors. He ducks his head away in an instinctive attempt to retreat into shadow for eyes swimming with protective tears, and in the haze of his desperate blinking there is the interruption of a sound, the snap of deliberate applause breaking into his hearing to demand his attention. Shizuo grimaces, and lifts a sleeve to rub roughly over his eyes to force them to clarity, and then he lifts his head to glare at the source of that mocking sound.

He sees the other at once. There is no one else in the courtyard, no other possible source of the clapping echoing off the high walls rising around them; but Shizuo thinks there could be a hundred people crammed into the space and his eyes would still be drawn directly to the young man standing across from him. He is leaning against a column, tilted back to make a curve of the slender length of his body as if to show off the obvious wealth that has soaked itself into the rich dye of his crimson shirt and the shine of his perfectly black boots, but there is no particular need for him to show off his clothes when his face is so arresting all on its own.

Shizuo has never seen anyone so breathtakingly beautiful. The man lounging across from him seems almost to glow in the sunlight, from the sheen of illumination against his inky hair to the wine-red of the color staining the curve of his smile to vivid clarity. There is even some suggestion of crimson in the gaze he has fixed on Shizuo from across the span of the courtyard, as if the color of his mouth is too intense to be restrained to the delicate lines of his lips. His skin is as pale as if he is only just now seeing the sun for the first time, his body lean and graceful in a way that draws the eye sliding appreciation along wrist and waist and thigh; the line of his jaw is so sharp that Shizuo’s gaze is pulled to the soft shadow against the length of his throat, his cheekbones arched to such delicate grace they tighten Shizuo’s breath in his chest. The other is unbearably beautiful, with an appearance that seems to strike a razor edge straight through the thunder of Shizuo’s heart in his chest, and for a moment all Shizuo can do is stand still and stare at the vision in front of him.

A perfect brow arches, that scarlet mouth tips up sharply at the corner. It takes Shizuo a moment to realize the smile has tilted into a smirk, and even then he’s so dumbstruck he hasn’t so much as considered speech by the time the figure across from him lets his hands fall from his put-upon applause and straightens from his lean against the column.

“A splendid show,” he says. His voice is as striking as his face, clear and sharp as it slices through the air; Shizuo blinks but has no words to offer by way of reply as the other takes a step towards him. “Do you deliberately practice buffoonery, or are you lucky enough to be blessed with a natural talent?”

Shizuo rocks back, jolted from his shock into awareness of himself by the blunt force of that ringing voice swinging the weapon of those words. “What?”

A second eyebrow joins the first, followed immediately by a laugh like sunlight on glass. “Not much of a conversationalist, either?” The other draws to a stop and cocks his head sharply to the side as he goes on smiling at Shizuo. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything more. You’re the huntsman from the village, aren’t you?” He slides his foot back behind him, his body tilting to follow the motion with casual grace. “Do you know how to communicate at all?”

Shizuo’s brows draw together, his chin comes down. “What?” he says, with more force this time. “I know how to  _ talk_.”

“It speaks,” the other drawls. “How lucky for us both.” He swings himself forward and into motion again, drawing nearer towards Shizuo as he goes on smiling with the edge of a blade along that perfect mouth. From this close Shizuo can see there’s no trace of the paint and powder that adorns the other inhabitants of the palace, nothing at all to prove that anything but nature has had a hand in the other’s unbelievable beauty. “Shall we attempt introduction, then?” He brings his hand out with a flourish, the gesture so sudden that Shizuo recoils before he can see there is no weapon in the other’s hold, that he is offering nothing but an open hand. “I know who you are already. You’re that monster, Heiwaijima Shizuo.”

Shizuo was lifting his hand to accept the formality of a handshake without thinking; the cut of the other’s words tightens his fingers in against his palms to turn the gesture of token greeting into the threat of a blow instead. “ _What?_ ”

The other lifts his chin to flash the bright of his gaze through heavy lashes at Shizuo. His smile hasn’t so much as flickered; it’s like a threat all in itself. “They say you can tear tree trunks apart with your bare hands,” he purrs. “Is it true that you hunt your prey down like an animal yourself, with teeth and claws?”

Shizuo hisses. “Fuck you.”

The other’s eyebrows jump, his mouth widens on a smile, but the reply comes from over Shizuo’s shoulder, from a part of the world Shizuo had entirely forgotten existed.

“Watch your tongue.” Shizuo’s guide is standing at the door when Shizuo turns to look back to him; his words are sharp but his gaze is level, with none of the anger it carried for Shizuo’s rudeness the night before. His eyes meet Shizuo’s as the other looks at him, holding for a moment as if to press a point, before they flicker back to the beautiful young man standing in the sunlight. “You are before His Highness, Izaya, the crown prince of the realm.”

Shizuo supposes he ought to be surprised. His conversation with the queen the night before had dropped entirely out of his head, as absent from his attention as his awareness of his guide emerging through the doorway behind him. In the first moment of meeting the beauty smirking at him from the middle of the courtyard Shizuo had forgotten there was any world but the space around them and the sharp-toothed grin flashing over those crimson lips. But as soon as he hears the words he understands: understands the queen’s description, understands the danger, understands the kind of person Izaya must be to make murder the only option. He looks back from his guide standing in the shadows behind him to Izaya, cast in the brilliance of the sunlight and smiling as he waits for Shizuo to look back at him, and Shizuo feels a shiver run through him at the thought of this man on the throne, with the lives of every subject in the kingdom placed in his hands as playthings. It’s something innate, an instinct in him that revolts at the prospect as much as it balked at the assumed dominance in the queen’s easy directing of his life, until Shizuo finds his eyes narrowing and his jaw tightening on a frown to balance the smile Izaya is still aiming at him.

“I don’t like you,” he says, without trying to soften the force of the blunt statement thrown like a blow at the prince in front of him.

Izaya’s lashes dip over his vivid eyes, their motion pulling back some of the mocking edge from his expression. His smile lingers, still clinging to the sharp upward angle of his lips, but the teasing edge of it falls into the shadow of his gaze holding to Shizuo’s face.

“That’s a shame,” he says. His voice has softened to a purr at the back of his throat; Shizuo can’t tell if it sounds more like disappointment or a threat. “I was hoping we could have some fun together, Shizu-chan.” Shizuo grimaces, rocking back on his heels against the casual intimacy of the nickname, but Izaya is coming forward faster than Shizuo can think to retreat. His hand comes up, his fingers reach out, and for a moment his palm is pressing flush against Shizuo’s cheek. Shizuo blinks, startled as much by the sudden proximity of Izaya’s dark eyes and delicate features as by the contact against his skin, and then Izaya flickers a smile directly at him and steps past him, sliding his hand down to trail his fingers over Shizuo’s jaw as he goes.

“Keep him around,” he says, speaking in a completely different tone to the man still standing between Shizuo and the door. The other man’s shoulders stiffen, his expression hardens, but if Izaya notices the distaste in his response he makes no motion to acknowledge it before continuing on to the door back into the palace. “Maybe I can make a better second impression than the first.”

“Not likely,” Shizuo growls, not exactly to Izaya but loudly enough that it will be clearly heard. Izaya just laughs and pulls open the door they came through just wide enough for him to turn sideways and slip through into the shadows within. Shizuo is left glaring after him, which he persists in until the man still with him clears his throat pointedly.

“You understand,” he says. When Shizuo looks at him the other is staring at him, his mouth set on forced silence while his eyes insist on intensity. “You will do as the Queen directs.”

Shizuo would prefer if the statement were more of a question, to at least give him the appearance of a choice in the matter. But his anger is taking a completely different shape, and he doesn’t have the heat to spare to protest this assumption. He ducks his head into a nod, grimacing even as he does so.

“Yeah,” he says. “I understand.” He glares at the door again, as if his gaze might be able to carry through the wood to the hallway and Izaya beyond, as he lifts his hand to rub where Izaya touched him. Izaya’s skin is pale as snow, as if it’s never carried so much as a hint of human heat beneath it; but Shizuo’s cheek burns like that glancing contact offered the kiss of fire to sear straight through him.


	4. Considered

Shizuo wakes the next morning to the thunder of knocking against the door of his assigned quarters. He sleeps well enough the second night, thanks in greatest part to his lack of rest his first evening in the palace and partially due to the increasing familiarity of the space in which he has now spent well over a day. He craves the open air of the forest, the sturdy comfort of his cabin and the soft murmur of the trees around him instead of the near-constant conversation and footsteps that seem to echo through the entirety of the palace, no matter where he has occasion to go; but he is held here twice over by royal whim, and his meeting with the crown prince has held his attention to a point even more immediate than his increasing desire to escape and return to the familiar peace of his home in the woods. He has no interest in politics, and a day and a half of forced confinement within the palace walls has only intensified his wish to be as far from them as he can get; but his thoughts circle the edge of Izaya’s slanting smile, his fingers tighten on the memory of shadowed lashes over vivid eyes, and some part of Shizuo is entirely certain that he will never find peace again until he has removed the barrier that Izaya’s existence presents to his own contentment.

Shizuo’s rise to consciousness feels more like a fight than a gentle surfacing. His dreams are dark, stormy with frustration and blood-stained with violence; he has to fight to free himself from them, as if he is being held in sleep by tendrils of blood reaching to wind themselves around his arms and stain his hands with the murder towards which instinct directs him. He opens his eyes to find his hands curled onto fists, and his teeth gritting tight on tension; when he sits up his head pounds protest that is hardly aided by the continuing sound against the door. Shizuo turns his head to scowl at the entrance with force enough that he feels his irritation ought to carry right through the barrier, before he growls, “Hold  _ on_,” in answer to whoever it is rattling against the door. The knocking ceases, leaving a silence that rings with anticipation in its wake, and Shizuo hisses frustration and pushes back the weight of his blankets so he can get to his feet and pull his clothes back on from where he cast them over the chair last night before collapsing into the suffocating soft of the blankets.

Shizuo has his back to the door as he pulls his shirt on over his head and pushes his arms through the worn-in soft of the sleeves. His temper is improving just with the end to the sound that dragged him to waking; his headache is easing too, as his body catches up with his surroundings and brings him forward to full wakefulness. He leaves his shirt to hang loose around his hips as he reaches for the weight of his pants draped over the cushion of the chair, and he’s just shaking them out to step into the legs when a drawling voice cuts through the quiet surrounding him.

“I’m surprised.” The tone is light, as casual as if picking up the thread of a dropped conversation instead of intruding into Shizuo’s assumption of privacy. “You look so much more  _ normal _ than I expected.”

Shizuo jerks around. His gaze jumps to the doorway, seeking out the identity of the intruder with the instinct of adrenaline; but his body recognizes that voice before his eyes have yet landed on the curving lips and dark gaze of the figure leaning against the wall just alongside the doorway. Shizuo’s shoulders are hunching even as he turns, his mouth dragging towards a scowl as quickly as his eyebrows fold into a crease at his forehead, so by the time he is facing Izaya his whole body is tense with the expectation of violence, braced for a blow and ready to throw one at the least provocation.

Izaya doesn’t so much as blink at the surprise obvious in Shizuo’s reaction. He just cants his head to the side, tilting his smile to a sharper angle as he meets Shizuo’s furious scowl. “Morning, Shizu-chan.”

“You,” Shizuo growls. “What the  _ fuck _ are you doing here? Get  _ out_.”

Izaya raises his eyebrows. “Are you telling me to leave a room of my own palace?” His laugh shatters against the walls around them. The space seemed absurdly expansive to Shizuo on his first arrival here; with the two of them in it together, it feels so claustrophobic he can hardly take a breath. “You’re only here on my prerogative, Shizu-chan. You don’t have any authority to tell me to go anywhere.”

Shizuo hisses frustration that loses no force for being incoherent. “What do you  _ want_?”

“I told you yesterday,” Izaya says. “I wanted to have a second meeting, to see if I might make a better impression than the first.” His lashes drop over his eyes, his gaze dipping so deliberately that Shizuo can see it clearly even across the full distance of the room standing between them. “And I wanted to find out if you really are the monster the stories make of you.” His head dips farther to the side, as if to follow the weight of his lashes flickering across his gaze. “You look human enough from here.”

Shizuo isn’t generally particularly self-conscious about his body. Living alone with long days between human interactions makes nudity something of a non-issue, except for matters of warmth. But with Izaya’s gaze sliding over him like a caress he becomes very immediately aware of the hem of his shirt hanging against his thighs and just how much of his body is visible to the man standing fully clothed and fully composed against the door of the bedroom. Shizuo’s face heats and he turns away to gain what distance he can by putting the wall of his shoulders between himself and Izaya as he shakes out his pants and steps into the legs.

“You don’t need to be self-conscious, Shizu-chan.” Izaya’s voice rings clear through the room as Shizuo pulls his pants up around his hips and wrenches at the ties that lace up the front. “It’s not like you’ve got anything I haven’t seen before. Although you  _ are _ quite an impressive example.” 

Shizuo can hear the whisper of silk against itself as Izaya straightens from alongside the doorway, followed by the pace of approaching footsteps. “Is that where your reputation comes from?” Shizuo ties off the laces of his pants in a hard knot as Izaya’s steps draw closer behind him. “Are you too much of a beast to live in the village among the rest of the humans?”

There’s a whisper against the back of Shizuo’s neck, contact so delicate it could be a breeze if he weren’t multiple layers of stone away from the open air, and Shizuo turns in a rush to snatch for Izaya’s outstretched wrist. He’s sure he hadn’t tensed, hadn’t so much as caught a breath to give away the intention of his action, but Izaya predicted it all the same, or has reflexes so quick that even Shizuo’s experience as a hunter can’t track them. Shizuo’s fingers close on empty air, with nothing beneath the strength of his hold, and Izaya is darting backwards with liquid grace to match the spill of a laugh he leaves in his wake. Shizuo thinks about lunging after him, to tackle that lithe body to the floor where he can’t so easily slip free of the other’s hold; but he’s in the palace still, and he’s fairly sure the Queen’s forbearance for regicide won’t extend to murdering the crown prince while actually within the castle walls. He grits his teeth together and tightens his hands to fists at his sides instead, glaring fury as Izaya dances back to resume his position next to the door. “What do you  _ want_, Izaya?”

“Presuming my first name?” Izaya comments, with a smile that bares the glint of a blade with it. “You’re lucky I’m so forgiving, Shizu-chan. After all, I’m sure the particulars of human politeness must be terribly confusing for you.” Shizuo’s chin comes down and Izaya lifts his hands into a gesture of surrender as insincere as his smile.

“I’m looking for company. It’s been  _ ages _ since I was out of the palace and your presence has reminded me of the beauties that nature offers us.” Izaya straightens from his lean back against the wall behind him and clasps his hands behind his back. “I wish to visit this forest where you have seen fit to make your home. Of course, as royalty I can hardly go alone.” He lifts one of his hands to press slender fingers to a show of concern against his chest. “Who knows what kind of accident might befall me?” His arm drops, his gaze lifts. “So you shall come with me.”

Shizuo stares. It’s a reasonable enough statement, as far as it goes; he knows nothing at all about the expectations for princely behavior, but judging from the affair Shinra makes of a simple visit to Shizuo’s home he suspects the process of allowing the heir to the throne out into the woods is an involved one. But the offer is too perfect an opportunity for Shizuo to believe, even considering the persuasive power the Queen must wield, and for a moment all he can do is gape at Izaya, even his temper dissolved in the face of this obvious chance.

Izaya’s eyebrow lifts into an arch as he cocks his head to the side. “Shizu-chan?” he says. “Was that too many words for you to keep track of?”

Shizuo blinks back into a scowl but the expression lacks any real force to it. “Shut up,” he says. “You want me to take you into the forest? Alone?”

Izaya shrugs. “From the stories they tell of you you should be able to fight anything off with your bare hands, if it comes to it,” he says with blithe unconcern for the possibility of attack he is describing. “And I’m sure the guards can provide you with some kind of weapon, if that would make you feel safer.” His lashes flutter, his gaze darkens. “Unless it’s me you’re scared of.”

Shizuo scoffs. “I’m not afraid of  _ you_.”

Izaya’s lips curl into a smile. “It’s all settled then,” he says. He reaches for the door handle without turning his gaze away from the up-and-down motion he sweeps over Shizuo. “Make yourself as presentable as you can be. We’ll leave within the hour.”

Shizuo rocks back on his heels. “That soon?”

Izaya pulls the door open. “Sure,” he says. He’s still bracing that smile against his lips, still forming the outline of amusement, but something about it is tightening, some part of the taunt in his gaze is darkening even as Shizuo stares at him. “There’s no point in putting it off, is there, Shizu-chan?” His eyes meet Shizuo’s and hold for a moment as his smile melts to no more than a twist of his crimson lips. Shizuo feels the hairs at the back of his neck rise, feels his skin prickle into goosebumps of self-consciousness; but Izaya just pulls the corner of his smile back up, and turns to slip out of the door before Shizuo can decide to feign ignorance, much less figure out how to do so. Shizuo is left standing alone in his palace quarters in his own rumpled clothes, his heart pounding with adrenaline and mouth tight on a frown as he stares unseeing after Izaya.


	5. Deflected

“This is  _ thrillingly _ awful,” Izaya declares, his voice pitching loud enough that the cant of it reaches to the open sky overhead and rings in Shizuo’s ears where the other is trailing behind him. Izaya tips his head to glance back over his shoulder at Shizuo. “You really  _ choose _ to live out in the wild like this?”

Shizuo growls in the back of his throat. “I’m not living  _ in the forest_,” he tells Izaya. “I have a house.”

“Mm,” Izaya hums. “A rustic lodge, is that it? Or is it more like a barn?” He turns to walk backwards as he grins at Shizuo trudging in his wake. “You know that caves don’t count, right?” Shizuo bares his teeth by way of answer and Izaya laughs and turns back to continue his wandering route through the trees around them. “You’ll have to show me this claimed house of yours. I can’t wait to see what passes for comfort for you.”

“Not in a thousand years,” Shizuo says, but Izaya ignores this with another laugh before letting the patter of his conversation fall to the relative quiet of their mismatched steps rustling through the underbrush of the forest. Shizuo glares at the back of Izaya’s shirt, today a perfectly pristine white that makes his hair gleam with hints of blue and is utterly unsuited for the proposed outing, but he doesn’t bother with offering any further protest. Izaya can pace verbal circles around him even with half his attention dedicated to keeping his footing in his fine black boots, and Shizuo isn’t particularly interested in flaring his own temper any hotter than it has already gone.

His mind is elsewhere, anyway. He and Izaya departed the palace over an hour ago, with no more fanfare than what Izaya carries with him in the brilliance of his eyes and the shine of his hair, and Shizuo hasn’t been able to pick out any sign of pursuers following them into the woods. It had seemed like it must be a trap, sending Shizuo out unaccompanied to the forest with exactly the target of the Queen’s assassination request; but Shizuo can find no indication that this is anything other than exactly the obvious opportunity it appears to be. There is no one trailing them, no sign of the least concern about sending the crown prince out alone into the middle of the forest with no one but the rumor-laden huntsman of the village for protection. The only explanation Shizuo can come up with is that this is precisely what it looks like, a golden chance presented to him as a royal gift; the threat of danger in the event of his noncompliance goes unacknowledged, but that has hardly removed it from his awareness.

His feelings haven’t changed. Izaya all but glitters with danger, as if he’s catching the light the same way a fragment of glass or the high polish of a razor-sharp blade would; the same clarity that brings all the beauty of his features to such breathtaking heights seizes at the back of Shizuo’s neck with a bone-deep, instinctive fear. No one should be as beautiful as Izaya is, there is a danger inherent in a mouth that charms as quickly as it smiles and eyes like endless pools of shadow. If Shizuo could ensure that he would never see Izaya again, that he could separate his life from the other’s and know nothing further of the heir to the throne, he would do so immediately, with all the instinct of reflex behind the decision. But to face him down deliberately, to stand across from him and stare into that face and lift his hand to destroy it himself: that is something else again. Shizuo has been working his hands at his sides ever since he followed Izaya across the drawbridge to the castle, trying to find a strength that has never been as nebulous as it is for him now.

“I’m hungry,” Izaya announces, the crisp edge of his voice forcing Shizuo back to the present moment. When Shizuo looks up to blink at the other Izaya has lifted his chin into regal arrogance that he only barely deigns to cast back over his shoulder to actually land on Shizuo behind him. “Isn’t there anything to eat out here, Shizu-chan?”

Shizuo grimaces. “Why are you asking me?”

“You’re a huntsman, aren’t you?” Izaya turns on his heel to swing around and fix his attention on Shizuo as the other comes forward to stand in front of him. “You  _ do _ hunt.”

“Of course I hunt,” Shizuo tells him. “That doesn’t mean I can catch anything with you thundering through the branches like you are.” This isn’t entirely fair; Shizuo had expected the worst, but Izaya is remarkably light on his feet, as if he doesn’t carry the same attachment to the ground as others, or as if his form is as ethereal as his beautiful face. Neither of them are moving with any particular care for the sound they make, but Izaya is no more to blame than Shizuo for scaring off the animals that otherwise occupy the woods.

Shizuo says none of this, and Izaya can’t possibly have the experience to know what is going unstated. He still tips his chin down to look up through his lashes, a smile starting on his lips as if he’s appreciating the taste of mockery before he sets it free. Shizuo braces himself for another one of Izaya’s savagely efficient verbal assaults, but when Izaya speaks it’s with his chin still tipped down and his voice tilting towards syrup instead of steel.

“But I’m  _ hungry_.” The words would be a whine from any other throat. In Izaya’s they gain weight enough to become a plea layered with the shadows of innuendo. “Don’t you have  _ anything _ I can eat, Shizu-chan?”

Shizuo scowls at Izaya instead of acknowledging the suggestion Izaya is making of his tilted head and parted lips. “Nothing  _ you’d _ like,” he says instead, answering Izaya’s purr with aggressive force. “You sleep on feathers and dress in silk, you’d probably hate anything out here.”

Izaya’s eyebrows lift along with the corners of his mouth. “Try me.”

Shizuo glares at Izaya for a moment. It’s easy to stoke the heat of his temper when he can hear the mockery draping itself over the other’s words; the only problem is that he’s looking at Izaya’s face, and his attention keeps dropping to the sultry color staining the other’s lips and tangling into the lush dark of his heavy eyelashes. Shizuo’s heart is pounding too fast in his chest, as if he’s been sprinting through the forest instead of pacing, and his hands feel shaky, like they’re taking on a life of their own to act the moment Shizuo lets his guard down. Shizuo grimaces, and shakes his head to pull himself free, and shoves roughly past Izaya to stride deeper into the forest.

“Follow me,” he says, without turning to see if Izaya is obeying. The other doesn’t have anywhere else to go, unless he intends to find his way back to the palace alone, and even with what minimal interaction they have had so far Shizuo feels a strange certainty in whatever force has so locked Izaya’s attention onto him. He holds the full of the other’s interest, for better or for worse, and it is no surprise at all when the crunch of his footsteps is followed immediately by the lighter tread of Izaya’s trailing behind him.

They walk in silence for some minutes. Shizuo makes no secret of the direction he’s headed; it’s not as if he has any reason to hide, after all, and Izaya’s unlikely to be able to find his way out here alone anyway. Shizuo’s thoughts trip over that, as slow-rising dread reminds him that Izaya is unlikely to be doing anything at all, if Shizuo completes the mission he has been assigned; but by then they’re already close enough to see the spill of light into the clearing ahead, and when Shizuo’s footsteps stall Izaya slips past him to carry on as easily as if he hasn’t even noticed the other’s hesitation. Shizuo watches him pass, his gaze lingering on the fluid grace of Izaya’s movements as he pushes a branch aside and steps around the shadow of a tree, and then he sets his jaw on a frown, and moves to follow in the other’s wake.

Izaya is standing in the middle of the clearing by the time Shizuo pushes through the last of the branches to step out into the light. There’s a break in the tree cover here; Shizuo has never known what caused this particular ring of space, or why it hasn’t yet filled in, but it’s been here as long as he has known, with no signs of the undergrowth creeping into the edges. And in the center of the space, as if deliberately planted there, is the tree.

“Apples,” Izaya says. “What is an  _ apple _ tree doing in the middle of the forest?” He steps closer to the wide-spreading branches and reaches up to brush his fingertips against the crimson fruit hanging just over his head. “Do apples even grow this time of year?”

Shizuo shrugs roughly. “These do,” he says. “I’ve never seen it without fruit.”

Izaya hums. “Magic, then.” He tips his head to look through his lashes at Shizuo glaring at him from the edge of the clearing. His mouth curves up onto a smirk. “Will I be cursed for eating one?”

“I’ve eaten dozens,” Shizuo tells him.

Izaya laughs outright. “Not a very reassuring statement, coming from a monster who lives alone in the woods.” His fingers tighten at the sides of the apple and he twists sharply to snap the fruit free of its stem. “But I’ll take my chances all the same.” He keeps his gaze on Shizuo as he brings the apple to his mouth to set his teeth against the fruit; Shizuo can hear the crunch of his bite even from the other side of the clearing. Shizuo answers by rolling his eyes and turning aside to settle himself on one of the larger boulders at the edge of the clearing while he leaves Izaya to his apple so he can turn over his thoughts himself.

He doesn’t know if he can do this. It is true that Izaya is radiant with danger, that he seems to tighten threatened adrenaline along Shizuo’s spine just by his presence; but he’s still human, for all his uncanny beauty and terrifying grace. He has offered no real threat to Shizuo’s life, however dangerous the purr of his voice and the weight of his lashes feels; Shizuo can’t imagine drawing the knife hanging at his belt against him, much less setting the razor edge of it against Izaya’s snow-white skin. His instinct insists that Izaya is dangerous, demands a relief to the stress hunching Shizuo’s shoulders even where he’s sitting now; but basic humanity keeps his hands in his lap instead of reaching for his weapon, keeps his fingers slack even as he thinks of curling them into a fist. He can’t reconcile the impulses, can’t fight his way to victory over either; and then Izaya’s voice cuts through his distraction, “ _Shizu-chan_ ” coming with a sharp edge that suggests this may not be the first time he’s spoken.

Shizuo looks up with a jerk. Izaya is still standing in front of him, along the path between Shizuo and the apple tree, but he’s looking at Shizuo now, one eyebrow raised as he lifts the apple to his mouth to take another bite. He lifts his hand from his side as Shizuo looks at him, his open palm a clear demand even before he lifts his chin to gesture.

“Give me your knife.” There’s no threat to the question; Izaya speaks as if he’s asking Shizuo to hand over a plate, with a certainty of obedience that leaves no space for refusal. Shizuo scowls at the tone, but he reaches for his belt all the same, wondering at Izaya’s timing when he’s already halfway through the fruit in his hand. Izaya brings the apple to his mouth for another bite as Shizuo draws the knife and offers it hilt-first against the other’s palm. Izaya’s fingers curl around the weapon, bracing themselves to stability as he lifts his other hand to press his sleeve against his mouth.

“Well,” he says. “That’ll make things easy.” And he lunges forward, flinging himself at Shizuo as the apple falls from his hand and he lifts the knife over the other.

Shizuo doesn’t think of reacting. If he were with someone else he thinks the blow would fall before he even thought of responding. But he’s with Izaya, all his nerves prickling with instinctive fear, and so when the sunlight catches off the blade Shizuo jerks back, leaning away from Izaya’s forward motion on a reflex he doesn’t even recognize before he has acted. The point of the knife catches at his shirt, slicing through the rough fibers as if they are silk; but Shizuo’s motion saves his skin from the cut, and that same reflex is carrying him forward again, lifting his arm as quickly as Izaya’s falls with the conclusion of his action. Shizuo’s fingers close on Izaya’s shirt, he shoves to knock the other’s balance out from under him, and Izaya falls as quickly as Shizuo rises to overbear him. His knees give way, his body going slack as quickly as Shizuo shoves against him, and they land heavily against the earth of the clearing with Shizuo sprawling atop Izaya to pin him to stillness. Shizuo reaches to seize at Izaya’s wrist, to dig his thumb in hard against the tendons of the other’s arm and force his hold loose on the knife; no sooner has it fallen than he is reaching to claim it for himself so he can bring it between them and force the edge against Izaya’s throat. The whole action happens without speech, almost without thought: and Shizuo finds himself crushing Izaya against the soft ground of the clearing, one hand bruising against an elegant wrist while the other holds the blade of a bared hunting knife close against the prince’s throat.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Shizuo grates out. It’s hard to speak with his throat so tight on adrenaline and defensive terror, but the latter is rapidly transforming into rage to cord the tendons of his wrist with the impulse to drag the knife across to tear open the throat of his demonstrated enemy. “I’m going to fucking  _ kill _ you.”

Izaya stares up at him. There is no tension in his face, no fear behind his eyes or frustration at his jaw; he looks entirely relaxed, as if the flicker of attempted violence was at some other hand than his, as if he is no more than an unrelated observer in the burst of conflict that has just emerged. Shizuo glares at him, willing Izaya to do something, say something,  _ anything _ to give him the traction he needs to take decisive, bloody action; and then Izaya’s mouth curves, and he does the last thing Shizuo expects from him, and he laughs.

“Of course you are,” he says. There is no mockery in his tone, no doubting sarcasm to reply to Shizuo’s threat. Izaya makes it sound as if Shizuo has told him the sky is blue, or that the sun has risen, or that he’s the prince of the realm. “That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?” Izaya’s lashes darken the crimson shade of his eyes. His smile tugs to a tight line at his lips. “To put down the mad prince.”

Shizuo goes still. His fingers are gripping tight around the handle of the knife, the blade is still flush against the pale line of Izaya’s throat, but the shock of the other’s words is such that for a moment even his quivering rage stands down, retreating from the taut line of his body to leave him staring blankly at Izaya pinned to the ground beneath him.

“What,” Shizuo starts, and then blinks, and swallows, and tries again. “What did you say?”

“You came here to kill me,” Izaya says again, repeating the secret with effortless ease, as if it’s a simple fact of life. “My cousin the Queen had you brought in to the palace to threaten you and everyone you love with disaster as a means of forcing you to assassinate me. We were introduced so you could be persuaded I was not to be trusted, and I was allowed free of the palace this morning so you could take me out into the woods and murder me.” Izaya shifts under Shizuo. Shizuo’s jaw tightens, his fingers clench harder around Izaya’s wrist to lock the other still, but Izaya isn’t trying to get free: he just arches up against Shizuo’s weight atop him, curving his back to press his chest flush against the other’s. “Take that knife and cut my heart out to hand over as proof of your victory.”

“ _What?_ ” Shizuo blurts. “Are you  _ crazy_?”

“She won’t believe it otherwise,” Izaya tells him. He still doesn’t look at all afraid; his mouth is slanting over that same smile, although the darkness behind his eyes remains untouched by the supposed amusement at his lips. “You’ll have to give her something to prove your success if you want to keep your family safe.” Izaya’s eyebrow arches as he considers Shizuo’s face. “You  _ do _ have a family, don’t you? You live alone in the woods but  _ someone _ must have raised you, unless you really were whelped by animals.”

“Shut up,” Shizuo growls. “Don’t talk about my family.”

“Keep them safe,” Izaya tells him. “All you have to do is cut my throat. I know you want to. I even attacked you first. You have every reason to do it.” He lifts his chin up: sunlight kisses the length of his neck, trailing down the graceful curve of it to where the blade of the knife in Shizuo’s hand stands like a wall to cast stark shadow across Izaya’s skin. “Kill me, monster.”

Shizuo stares at Izaya. There is no flinching in the curve of the other’s smile, no flickering in the force of his gaze; he looks completely serious, with no indication of mockery in expression or tone. The lilting amusement is gone from his voice, replaced with such complete calm that Shizuo can hear nothing but certainty under it; there is no hint of escape anywhere in his body pinned beneath Shizuo’s. The only movement is in the rhythm of his heart, beating hard against his chest where it’s pressed to Shizuo’s, and against the pale column of his throat, where a droplet of blood has seeped along the edge of the knife and is trickling a crimson path over white skin. Shizuo stares at the blood, frowning as logic tries to catch up to the insanity of this conversation, as he tries to make sense of the situation in which he has been tangled; and then he shakes his head sharply, and he pulls the knife back from Izaya’s throat at once.

There is a moment of surprise that flickers across Izaya’s face, widening his dark eyes and softening the smile braced at his lips. Shizuo doesn’t linger to savor it; he’s too busy pushing up to free the other from beneath the weight of his body as he rocks back onto his knees and brings the knife around to wipe the blade clean with the edge of his shirt.

“Get up,” he says shortly.

Izaya pushes himself to sit upright and lifts a hand to touch his fingers against the nick at the side of his throat. “How noble of you,” he drawls. “I didn’t expect to find mercy at the hands of such an animal.”

Shizuo glares at Izaya and lifts the knife in front of him. “Don’t push it.”

Izaya lifts his hands palm-up. “I’m just trying to express my gratitude. No need to get all touchy.” 

His smile is still cutting a slash of amusement over his face but Shizuo doesn’t push back against it. His temper has cooled, the murderous edge of his anger has been blunted by the revelation of Izaya’s understanding; he knows he won’t be doing any harm with the knife in his hand now, and he has the unpleasant suspicion that Izaya knows that as well as he does. He sheathes the weapon at his belt instead, shoving it back into place with force enough that the leather stretches and creaks protest, before he rises to his feet so he can turn away.

He makes it perhaps a step towards the edge of the clearing before Izaya speaks. “Wait,” he says, making the word a command more than a plea. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Shizuo pauses to glare back over his shoulder. “Home,” he says shortly. “I’m done with this. I didn’t want to be involved in this scheme in the first place and I  _ really _ don’t want to be some piece in whatever weird game you’re playing with your cousin.” He turns away to continue towards the edge of the clearing. “Sort it out between the two of you. I’m done.”

“You’re not.” The words aren’t a threat. Shizuo think he would scowl free of them if they were, would shake his head to shed them and continue on his path unhindered. But Izaya speaks with the frank certainty of a simple statement, and that’s enough to stall Shizuo’s steps and lock him in place at the edge of the clearing, his back to Izaya but his feet frozen beneath him. From behind him there’s the sound of fabric shifting as Izaya gets to his feet.

“You don’t get to be done,” Izaya says clearly. “You’re involved now. You were involved as soon as Shijima was sent out to bring you back for the Queen’s consideration.”

Shizuo hisses past his teeth. “I never  _ wanted _ to be involved.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Izaya tells him. “That’s not how royalty do things. What the Queen wants, the Queen gets.” There’s the sound of footsteps approaching, whisper-soft as Izaya moves with that uncanny grace. “And what she wants is me dead.”

Shizuo bares his teeth. “What are you saying then?” he says, twisting to glare as Izaya draws up to stand alongside him. “You’re going to just lie down and let me kill you?”

Izaya’s lashes dip, his smile tugs wider. “I’m saying we give the Queen what she wants,” he says. His hand lifts, his fingers brush Shizuo’s waist before coming down to weight to a caress against the handle of the knife. “Or at least something that looks like what she expects.”

Shizuo frowns at Izaya. “What?”

Izaya tilts his head to the side. His hair sweeps around his features with the motion, the weight of it drinking the light into saturated shadow as his mouth curves onto a smile. “Appearances can be deceiving,” he purrs from behind the shadow of his lashes, around the slash of his smile. “And I know all about deception.” He slides the knife from Shizuo’s belt and holds it point-down between them. “I can help you save your family.”

Shizuo doesn’t trust Izaya. There is nothing but lies against the curve of the other’s lips, nothing but mockery behind the shadow of his lashes. But the palace looms in the distance, a weight too great for Shizuo to shift himself free from, and what he could face alone he can’t bear for his parents and Kasuka too. He glares at Izaya, at his beautiful, deceptive face and the offer in the weapon he’s extending; and then he lifts his own hand, and he closes his grip to a fist to crush against Izaya’s fingers around the knife handle.

The force must be painful, must ache bruising damage along Izaya’s arm and up the line of his shoulder. But the sharp edge of Izaya’s smile catches the sunlight all the same, and when Shizuo’s breath catches he doesn’t know if it’s danger or beauty seizing such a fist around his chest.


	6. Beguiled

Izaya is waiting when Shizuo comes back in from the forest.

“Finally,” he groans as Shizuo pushes open the door to the cabin with force enough that the weight swings in and rebounds off the wall just behind it. “I thought Shijima was going to show up while you were still out wandering.”

“I wasn’t wandering,” Shizuo growls at him. “I was checking my traps. It’s not as if animals are going to just walk up and offer themselves to me.”

“No?” Izaya drawls. “There go all my dreams of following in your footsteps, Shizu-chan.” This is so obviously mockery that Shizuo doesn’t deign to respond with anything more than a scowl in Izaya’s direction, but Izaya is already looking to Shizuo’s belt and ducking his head in acknowledgment. “You did catch something?”

Shizuo looks down. “Yeah.” He unties the rabbit he found dead in one of his snares and holds it up. “Will this be enough?”

“It’s going to have to be,” Izaya says. “Unless you want to offer yourself?” Shizuo frowns at him and Izaya laughs. “That’s what I thought.” He turns to step through the space of the cabin. “Let’s go.”

Shizuo follows. He isn’t completely sure how he ended up looking to Izaya for instruction; his awareness of the present dynamic alone is enough to hunch his shoulders with stress and tighten his jaw on frustration. But he has no idea how to achieve the freedom from royal observation that Izaya has promised him on his own, and with no better suggestion he is left following Izaya’s instructions to concoct a deception sufficient to persuade the Queen that her will has been done.

Izaya takes them out of the cabin to the shadows just behind it where Shizuo has cleared the underbrush to the soft earth of the forest floor. He pauses at the corner of the building and turns back to face Shizuo, lifting his chin and tossing his head to sweep his hair back from his face.

“Alright,” he says, and angles his head to the side. “Do it.”

Shizuo grimaces. “I don’t see why we have to do it like this,” he says. “Couldn’t we just splash the blood on after?” But Izaya is shaking his head, and Shizuo lacks the force to really argue a point he already knew to be futile.

“It won’t look convincing,” Izaya says. “You need to persuade my cousin that you did as she told you to. Everything needs to look exactly right or she’ll be suspicious and you’ll be in the same problem over again.”

Shizuo hisses. “Even the bloodstains?”

“Especially the bloodstains,” Izaya says, in such a flat tone that Shizuo’s spine prickles and he finds his voice chilled to silence in his throat. Izaya angles his head to the side and gestures sharply for Shizuo to act. “Hurry up.”

Shizuo hesitates for another moment in spite of himself. It’s a good idea, however little he may care for the person who offered it; he would never have thought of offering evidence of the deed, much less of creating false proof to sate the Queen’s desire for her cousin’s life. But the fact of what Izaya is demanding of him is gruesome in the moment, so much so that it holds Shizuo’s hands from the action Izaya is waiting for. They stand there for a moment, Izaya waiting with an eyebrow raised and Shizuo with a knife in one hand and the rabbit in the other; and then there is the sound of hoofbeats through the trees, and both Shizuo and Izaya turn towards the proof of a rider approaching along the road. There’s a moment of silence; and then Izaya is turning back, his eyes wide with something very nearly fear.

“ _Hurry_ ,” he hisses, but Shizuo is moving already, his body urged to action by the immediacy of the need. He lifts the rabbit up over Izaya’s bared neck, brings the knife up to cut its throat, and the blood spills over Izaya’s skin and across the collar of his shirt. The silk stains instantly, saturated to crimson on contact, and Izaya doesn’t make any motion to save it. It’s only as Shizuo draws back to drop the rabbit that Izaya lifts his head to nod sharply at the blade of Shizuo’s knife.

“Sheathe that,” he says. Shizuo wipes the edge clean against his shirt as Izaya lifts his hands to press to the red smeared across his neck and chest. He’s stepping in as quickly as Shizuo looks up, reaching out with both hands to make fists of the front of Shizuo’s shirt and pull the other in towards him. Shizuo stumbles forward, his balance knocked loose by the surprise of Izaya dragging at him, and Izaya lifts his chin and smiles shadows up at him.

“To show I struggled,” he says, and frees his grip so he can lift his arms above his head. “Take my shirt.” Shizuo obeys, gripping handfuls at the hem of Izaya’s shirt, and when he pulls it free of the other’s pants Izaya slides loose, stripping his arms from the bloodstained sleeves to leave Shizuo clutching at the ruined garment. Izaya shakes his hair back from his face and lifts a hand to push the dark locks away from his face. “Now go inside and wait for Shijima.”

Shizuo takes a step back towards the door, but his gaze is still on Izaya and his jaw is still tight with adrenaline. “What about you?”

“I’ll stay out of sight,” Izaya tells him. “I can take care of myself, believe it or not.” He couples this with a flash of a grin and ducks his chin towards the house again. “ _Go_.”

Shizuo wants to protest this demand, if only to push back against the assumption of dominance Izaya is making in a space that is Shizuo’s, or at least has been until now. But the hoofbeats are thundering closer, and Izaya is standing with no more than the barrier of the cabin between him and discovery, and Shizuo is already too committed to this path to retreat now. He goes.

He’s barely inside the cabin when there is a knock at the front door, followed immediately by a “ _Heiwajima Shizuo_ " that is more demand than anything even Izaya has offered thus far. Shizuo grimaces and strides forward across the space, anxious to answer the door before Shijima thinks to wander around the side as he did on his first visit. There’s no time to check the surroundings, to clear any trace of a second person from the space; all Shizuo can do is come forward, and reach for the handle, and pull the door open to turn his scowl on Shijima himself.

Shijima looks as pristine as he did on his first visit, as he has in all his meetings with Shizuo. His chin is lifted, his gaze cutting down the line of his nose as he considers Shizuo; his expression conveys insult without the need for the least words to be put to it. It’s only as his gaze drops to Shizuo’s shirtfront, and then to the bloodstained shirt crumpled in his grip, that his expression falters, his haughty stare breaking open on a moment of shock before he can reel himself back into a better display of composure once more.

“I see you have done as Her Majesty asked.” Shijima sniffs and forces an eyebrow to arch on surprise. “I wasn’t sure you had it in you, even after your meeting. It seems you are more of a killer than I gave you credit for.”

Shizuo grimaces. “You didn’t give me much choice,” he says, and lifts the shirt to shove directly at Shijima’s chest. Shijima falls backwards by a step under the blow, his feet stumbling as he lifts his hands to catch the fabric before him, and Shizuo lets it go so he can drop his arm to his side again. “Happy now?”

Shijima looks down at the shirt. It’s more red than white, now, the fine fabric utterly ruined by the blood spilled over it. Shijima’s mouth twitches, his lips curving to a vicious smile as he looks at Izaya’s shirt stained with what he takes to be Izaya’s blood.

“Quite,” he says, and folds the shirt in on itself again. “Her Majesty will be very pleased. You have done your country a service.” He tucks the shirt away into a black bag hanging from his belt as he gives Shizuo a considering look. “You did away with the body, yes?”

“Yeah,” Shizuo says. The word goes short with the force it takes to press the lie past his teeth, but Shijima seems to take this as proof of sincerity and doesn’t push for more. He tugs the drawstrings of the bag closed again, twisting them around themselves without looking as he eyes Shizuo.

“You should clean yourself up,” he says, and ducks his head towards the front of the other’s shirt. Shizuo looks down. The cloth is heavier and darker than the fine silk of Izaya’s shirt, but the bloody prints of Izaya’s hands are still soaked into clear visibility where the other fisted at the fabric. Shizuo’s spine prickles with sudden awareness of the monster he appears, with handprints staining his shirt red and his hands sticky with the blood drying between his fingers and splattered across his wrists, but Shijima doesn’t wait for an answer. “You look like you’ve killed someone.” He bares his teeth in a bright, brittle smile; and then he turns away, striding back across the distance to where his horse is waiting. Shizuo glares after him, framed in his doorway as Shijima swings himself into the saddle and turns to urge his mount back towards the road, and he watches him go as the other moves away to become no more than a shadow through the trees.

“He’s right.”

Shizuo jumps, startled in spite of himself by how close the voice is. Izaya isn’t behind the cabin anymore; he must have followed Shizuo into the house as the other strode across the distance of the main room. He’s half-hidden in the shadows by the bed, but even with the darkness to disguise him his smile flickers like blinding sunlight to draw Shizuo’s attention.

Shizuo shoves the door shut as much on panic as irritation. “Were you there the whole time? He could have  _ seen _ you.”

“He wasn’t looking at anything but you,” Izaya says without the least indication of guilt. He cocks his head to the side and runs his gaze deliberately up and down Shizuo’s body. “You  _ do _ appear rather feral, Shizu-chan. I certainly wouldn’t be looking anywhere else with you in front of me.”

“Shut up,” Shizuo snaps. “You don’t look any better.”

“I’m recently returned from the dead,” Izaya says blithely. “I deserve at least a little leeway for that, don’t you think?” He smirks amusement at Shizuo. “Give me a bowl of water and a clean shirt and I’ll make myself presentable.”

Shizuo would like to protest this on principle, just for the sake of disagreeing with Izaya’s casual presumption. But he  _ is _ a mess, with his dark hair sticking together from the slide of his fingers and his skin smeared with blood to smudge his pale skin to a match for his lips. With his absent shirt Shizuo can see the lean lines of his body, from the curve of his throat to delicate shoulders to narrow waist, and even with his skin marked with sticky fingerprints and a trickle of blood running along his collarbone Shizuo thinks Izaya’s the most striking thing he’s ever seen, as if all the elegance of his finery is no more than a curtain to soften the blade-sharp beauty inherent in every motion of his body. Shizuo stares at Izaya for a moment, his focus scattered by his attention to the other’s bare skin; and then his gaze leaps back up to find Izaya watching him in turn. His eyes are heavy-lidded, his gaze darkened to unreadable shadow, but his mouth is taut around a smile that is far more knowing than Shizuo wishes it were. Shizuo feels his face heat, feels his shoulders hunch, and he turns away at once, before his wandering gaze can give more away than it already has.

“I’ll get you a shirt,” Shizuo says as he moves away. “Just stay there.”

Izaya’s laugh sounds very loud in the small cabin. “As you wish, Shizu-chan.” His tone is mocking, Shizuo can hear the amusement clinging underneath the shape of the vowels, but Shizuo doesn’t look back to offer the force of a glare, and however entertained Izaya may be he stays where he is while Shizuo goes in pursuit of clean clothes and somewhat greater composure than he is currently master of.


	7. Settled

“This is  _ incredible_.” The voice comes from over Shizuo’s shoulder; he doesn’t have to turn his head to recognize the teasing lilt on the words, even if there were more than one option for the company he has been regretting bringing into his home for nearly every moment since they came through the door. “This can’t even fit  _ you_, can it?”

“Shut up,” Shizuo growls. He can feel the shape of the words bracing familiarity against the back of his teeth. In a few days he thinks he’ll be able to seethe frustration even in his sleep, if he is ever able to attain anything like rest again. He dips his hands into the bowl of pink-tinted water in front of him and brings the cup of his palms up to splash over his face with more force than is at all necessary. “It’s a  _ shirt_. Are you going to pick a fight about every little thing?”

“All the things that are worth fighting over,” Izaya declares calmly. “Which at present does appear to be just about everything.”

Shizuo tips his head to glare at Izaya, although this expression of ire goes completely unseen by the man in question. Izaya is pacing around the corner of the cabin, his head tilted back as he considers the solid support of the roof over them. His crimson lips are pursed onto the same judgment that is carried in the weight of his bare foot thudding against the floor with the rhythm of his steps. Shizuo knows he doesn’t have to let his weight land with such force -- he heard how softly Izaya’s steps fell in the forest, surely he can be at least as quiet in bare feet as in the shining boots that have been deposited in the corner of the cabin -- but Izaya seems determined to keep up a running wall of sound to keep himself front of Shizuo’s mind, as if Shizuo needs any further reminder of the presence he has hidden away under his roof.

“It’s good enough for me,” Shizuo tells him, and turns away to finish rinsing the last of the bloodstains from his face and wrists. The color has spread everywhere, it seems: even after stripping off the shirt that served as proof of violence, Shizuo’s chest shows traces of the rabbit’s blood, and every time he turns his arm to check he finds another spot he missed the first time. There’s not as much on him as on the silk shirt he handed over to Shijima’s waiting hands, but Shizuo wants nothing so much as to be shed of all the reminders of the events of the last two days.

Unfortunately for him, the greatest of those is still pacing across the floor behind him, his eyebrows raised to elegant arcs as he considers the simple comforts of which Shizuo has composed his life. “I’m not surprised by that,” Izaya says. “You’re a village huntsman, I wouldn’t expect you to have any taste for the finer things in life.” He steps up to the heavy quilt spread out over the bed in the corner and reaches to brush his fingers across the careful stitches set into the fabric. “A wild animal like you probably prefers it here than in the palace.”

Shizuo rubs roughly over his face with a towel. It comes away clean, this time, without the smears of red that have greeted his previous attempts, and he brings it up to dry the back of his neck as he frowns at Izaya on the far side of the room. “I do,” he says. “At least no one’s trying to kill me out here.”

“Not yet,” Izaya says lightly. “The night is still young, Shizu-chan. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

Shizuo growls and throws the towel down so hard it cracks like a whip against the resistance of the air. “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

He’s expecting Izaya to laugh, to offer up that brittle chime of amusement that grates Shizuo’s teeth tighter together just for the hearing of it. But Izaya sweeps his expectations aside again with a “Yes,” with no particular heat on the word to grant it anything other than sincerity. Shizuo looks up to the other, his forehead creasing on confusion, but Izaya isn’t looking back at him. He’s gazing towards the far side of the cabin, where Shizuo has pulled the curtains he never uses shut over the windows to hide the second occupant of the home that has only ever been his before. He’s still smiling, as seems to be his default state, but his gaze is fixed so far distant that the angle of his expression looks more mockery than anything else, even with no subject for it but himself. “You should have.”

Shizuo grimaces. “Don’t say that.”

Izaya turns his head to give Shizuo back the focus of his gaze. “Why not?” he asks, and that sounds uncannily sincere too, even as he brings the question to flippant heights on his tongue. “It’s true. I’m a liability to you, now, proof that you failed to execute a royal command.” He turns on his heel, pivoting to face Shizuo as he clasps his hands behind his back and cocks his head to glimmer that smile a little brighter. “I could murder you in your sleep and there’s nowhere else you can send me, unless you want to take me out into the woods and leave me there to meet my fate.”

Shizuo snorts. “You’re not going to murder me.”

Izaya’s eyebrows lift. “You’re very sure of that,” he says. “Are you relying on my sense of gratitude for sparing my life?”

“No.” Shizuo turns away from Izaya’s mocking smile and reaches to grab at the bloodstained shirt he dropped alongside the bowl of water. He thrusts it at Izaya, who lifts his hands to take it without any shift in the skepticism arching his eyebrows, before he turns back to the bowl.

There is a deliberate pause before Izaya speaks in a carefully delicate tone. “I’m afraid I don’t understand your attempt at communication,” he drawls. “Is this supposed to be some kind of a bribe? You’ve already provided me with what passes for a garment for you, I don’t see myself wanting another.”

“Shut up,” Shizuo says. “Actually look at it.”

There is the rustle of fabric from behind him as Izaya goes through the motions of obedience. “I’m looking,” he says. “Do you want me to describe this for you? It’s just a shirt. It’s probably past saving even for you, these bloodstains are never going to come out.”

“Yeah,” Shizuo says. “The rabbit blood.”

He turns back around. Izaya is still staring at him, although his amusement has faded to a frown of sincere confusion, now. The shift makes it easier for Shizuo to look at him without a corresponding surge of temper with it; he goes on watching Izaya’s face as he reaches out to pull the shirt from the other’s hold so he can hold it up to make his point.

“The blood,” he says, lifting a hand to gesture. Izaya’s gaze follows the direction of Shizuo’s hand; Shizuo keeps watching the other’s face as he speaks. “There’s the handprints you left and some splashes.” Izaya’s lashes flicker, his jaw tightens like it’s forming a wall, but Shizuo goes on speaking even as the teasing soft of the other’s face hardens on defensive strain. “Nothing else.” He pushes the shirt at Izaya again but Izaya doesn’t lift his hands to take it this time, so Shizuo just goes on holding it in front of the other’s gaze as Izaya stares at the shirt instead of at Shizuo. “You were never trying to hurt me in the first place.”

Izaya’s throat works. For a moment Shizuo can see uncertainty flicker over his features, like a premonition of the lie about to come, before his expression lightens and he looks up to give the mask of his smile to Shizuo again. “You  _ did _ dodge. I had heard you were a beast but your reflexes were more than even I expected, Shizu-chan.”

“You weren’t trying to kill me,” Shizuo repeats, rather than bothering with replying to Izaya’s attempt at misdirection. “You weren’t even trying to hurt me. You just wanted to get me angry enough that  _ I _ would kill  _ you_.” He takes a step forward to shove the shirt directly against Izaya’s chest. Izaya grimaces at the force and reaches to grab at Shizuo’s wrist to steady himself as he stumbles backwards by a step. Shizuo ducks his head down to hiss against the other’s ear. “I’m not going to play into your plans any more than your cousin’s.”

Izaya’s mouth twitches towards a smile that meets an answering flare in his gaze fixed on Shizuo’s face. “So what, you’re going to keep me alive out of sheer spite?”

Shizuo hunches his shoulders into a shrug. “Sure,” he says, and twists his hand to shake off Izaya’s hold on his wrist so he can stride past the other and towards the rest of the cabin. Izaya is left behind him, his hands full of Shizuo’s ruined shirt; he doesn’t speak until Shizuo is on the far side of the room and reaching for the quilt spread out over the bed.

“You know, Shizu-chan,” Izaya calls. When Shizuo glances back at him Izaya’s smile is firmly back in place, coupled with the dark of his lashes dipping heavy curtains across his bright eyes. He has his hands clasped around the shirt in front of him; the position pulls the collar of Shizuo’s shirt around his shoulders down to gap at the base of his neck, where the laces have been left undone to trail loose. Shizuo’s gaze flickers down to brush against the line of Izaya’s throat, to touch at the rise of collarbone just visible beneath the too-large shirt before jumping back up to the steady dark of the other’s eyes on him.

“Have you considered that this was all part of my plan in the first place?” Izaya tips his head to the side and widens his smile. “Maybe you’re doing exactly what I wanted you to do.”

Shizuo huffs a breath. “Yeah,” he says. “Maybe.” He drags the quilt in towards him to bundle it in his arms. “I’ll worry about that when I have to.”

Izaya sighs heavily. “Are you always this impulsive?”

“Are you always this conniving?” Shizuo turns back from the bed with the heavy winter quilt in his arms. “I don’t have enough extra blankets to make up another bed so you’re going to have to make do with this. I’ll get the fire going and hopefully it’ll stay warm enough to get us through the night.”

“Hopefully?” Izaya purrs. He tosses the shirt over the damp towel without sparing a glance at it before he comes forward across the distance to where Shizuo is standing by the edge of the bed. “You know there  _ are _ better ways to stay warm.” He tilts his head to the side to make a show of looking around Shizuo’s shoulder. “Your bed’s big enough for two people, at least.”

“I like my space,” Shizuo says, and shoves the quilt at Izaya as the fastest means to force distance between them. “I’m  _ not _ sharing a bed with you.”

“Aww,” Izaya drawls. “So much for our bond of trust. Shouldn’t you at least show the good grace to let your guest have the bed?”

“You’re not my guest,” Shizuo tells him. “You’re…” He isn’t sure how to finish that sentence, and Izaya’s waiting smirk says that he knows that as well as Shizuo. Shizuo growls and reaches to shove at Izaya’s shoulder to push him away. “Go take the spot next to the fireplace.”

Izaya goes, his grin turning to a laugh as he does so. “I’m going,” he says. “If I freeze during the night it’ll be your fault, Shizu-chan!”

“I can only hope,” Shizuo growls, and goes to find a clean shirt to pull on before he goes outside to fetch the armload of firewood to keep the cabin and its two separate occupants warm through the hours of the night.


	8. Tempered

Shizuo wakes to a tug at his blankets.

He’s using fewer than he usually does. With the chill of winter still clinging to the spring air, the nights run cold enough that Shizuo is glad of the weight of his bedding heaped high over his bed to hold him down into the warm heaviness of sleep. But last night he stoked the fire to a roar before climbing into bed for himself, and sweated through the first hour as the cabin glowed with too-much warmth for the blankets he did have available. He fell into deeper sleep as the fire dimmed to ease back both the heat and the red-orange glow that filled the whole of the cabin around him, and he’s spent the rest of the night so deep in dreams that his first minutes of consciousness are a struggle to wrest clarity from the haze of drowsiness that has surrounded him.

His hold on the blankets around him is instinctive. He doesn’t think through the logic of what he’s doing or what might be trying to pull free the warmth wrapped around him; his hand just tightens at the top edge to keep them still as his mind stirs itself towards the logic that comes with greater awareness. He’s in his cabin, he processes with the slow-forming awareness that comes with waking, he’s in bed, the dawn is still a few minutes away from full daybreak; and then there is another wrench against the blankets around him, so sharp that the sheets pull free from the end of the bed to bare Shizuo’s feet to the cold of the room, and Shizuo hisses frustration and twists to look back as his grip tightens at the top edge.

Izaya is sitting at the foot of the bed, Shizuo’s topmost quilt draped loose around his shoulders and the greater part of the rest of the blankets heaped in his lap. He has a handful of Shizuo’s sheets even as Shizuo looks at him and makes no effort to deny the teasing that dragged Shizuo to consciousness; he just flashes his teeth into a brilliant grin and tugs against the bottom edge of the blankets again. “Morning, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo shuts his eyes and groans. He had fallen into blissful forgetfulness of the other’s presence over the course of the night; the sight of Izaya’s ink-black hair and slashing smile brings back the full impact of the last few days all over again. Shizuo lifts his hand to press his palm to shadow over his face. “Fuck.”

“That’s not a very polite greeting,” Izaya informs him. “I see we’re going to have to devote some time to polishing your manners as well as everything else.” He pulls sharply at the edge of the blankets and gets them free of Shizuo’s distracted hold; Shizuo growls and pushes up to make a grab for them, but Izaya is already heaping them over his lap to make a nest of his position on the floor, and all Shizuo gets for his efforts is another flash of teeth and a flutter of lashes. “You really have been left to run quite wild, haven’t you?”

“Shut up,” Shizuo replies automatically. “It’s too early for this.”

Izaya laughs. “It’s never too early for politeness, Shizu-chan,” he drawls, and tips his head towards the curtains still drawn over the narrow windows at the front of the cabin. “The sun’s coming up, anyway. Aren’t animals supposed to rise with the dawn?”

Shizuo grimaces. “Fuck you,” he says, as the most succinct comeback he has to offer. Izaya just laughs in response, which is about the reaction Shizuo expected. Shizuo rolls his eyes and gives up any attempt to wrestle his blankets back from Izaya in favor of swinging his legs around in the first motion towards getting out of bed. The air in the cabin is as cold as it usually is first thing in the morning, or at least as it has been for the last months of winter chill; it’s enough to pull Shizuo into full wakefulness even before he has stretched the tension of sleep out of his shoulders and pushed himself to his feet.

The fire has died down considerably. There are still a few coals down at the depths of the ashes from the night before, but Shizuo has to put his hand directly over them to feel their warmth. Any heat they offered must have been spent hours ago, in spite of Shizuo’s efforts to chase away the nighttime chill with the blaze. Shizuo grimaces and rocks back onto his heels so he can reach for the shovel to clear the ash and make space for a renewed fire.

“Sorry about the cold,” he says with as much sincerity as he can find for an apology to Izaya, which is not a lot but he feels is noteworthy all the same. “I meant to get up to stoke the fire when it started to die down.”

“And instead you slept through my pitiful pleas for warmth,” Izaya drawls. “You really were doing your best to freeze me to death, weren’t you?”

Shizuo turns to glare back over his shoulder at Izaya, who is still bundled in the heap of blankets and smirking at Shizuo from across the room. He looks warm enough at the moment, with his cheeks tinged to comfortable pink. “You’re the one who stole my blankets.”

“Yes,” Izaya says. “It was my last-ditch attempt to free myself from your clutches. Unfortunate for me that you proved so resilient, although I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything less. It seems I shall remain your prisoner somewhat longer.”

Shizuo groans and turns back to the fireplace. “You’re not my  _ prisoner_,” he says, shoveling the ash with more force than he should so it sends a cloud of dust up into the air around him. “You can leave whenever you want.”

“And go where?” Izaya wants to know. “Surely you don’t want me returning to the castle to offer evidence of your elegant lie.”

“You wouldn’t,” Shizuo says. “The Queen wants you dead as much now as ever. You’d just be getting yourself killed if you went back.” He pauses and frowns at the fireplace. “Why  _ does _ she want you killed, anyway?”

“Didn’t she tell you?” Izaya purrs, as if he’s relishing the sharing of some exquisite secret. “I’m plotting her downfall so I can seize control of this land. I’m mad with the promise of power and will run the country to ruin as soon as the crown touches my head.”

Shizuo shovels the last scoop of ashes into the bucket. “Are you?”

“Mm,” Izaya hums. “What do you think, Shizu-chan?”

His tone is mocking, Shizuo doesn’t need to see his face to recognize that much. Izaya will have a ready reply for anything Shizuo says, coupled with a smirk and a tilt of his head to make the response into an invitation for frustration that will tighten Shizuo’s fingers into fists and hunch his shoulders on temper. Shizuo gazes at the cleared fireplace, and thinks about the fact of the situation; and then he turns around to fix Izaya with his full attention.

Izaya is right where Shizuo left him. He’s leaning against the wall that runs alongside the bed, his shoulders tipped back under the weight of the quilt he has draped around him like a cloak; the rest of the blankets are heaped over his legs. The fall of them looks accidental, as if they just happened to tumble over Izaya’s lap in such a way that they draw the eye to the line of his thigh and leave one foot angled wide beneath them; Shizuo isn’t even sure that the result isn’t wholly unintentional, just another part of the unbelievable beauty that casts itself to illuminate everything Izaya does with radiance. Izaya’s head is tipped back against the wall behind him, his throat making a delicate curve up to the sharp edge of his jaw and the curve of his lips on his habitual smirk. Against the pale of his skin the tiny cut of Shizuo’s knife the day before stands out in clear relief against the side of his neck. Shizuo stares at the mark, at the lingering evidence of his lashing temper from the day before, and then he ducks his head and turns back to the fireplace.

“I think you’re a pain,” he says, and drags the shovel through another needless sweep of the blackened bricks that line the space. “But I don’t think you’re a murderer.”

Izaya hums. “That’s an interesting concept,” he says. “And you’re sure enough to let me stay in your home with you?”

Shizuo reaches for a pair of smaller logs to settle over the last embers of the night’s blaze. “You won’t hurt anyone but me here,” he says. “I’d rather risk my life than kill someone.”

“How noble,” Izaya drawls.

Shizuo shrugs. “It’s what makes sense to me.” He pauses for a moment so he can lean in and blow gently against the embers to coax them to an open flame. They glow brighter, illuminating from the inside out before their heat catches the tinder alight. Shizuo draws back, keeping his attention on the fire as he builds it towards the greater strength to take on more fuel. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

“Oh no,” Izaya says. “You’re right, I don’t have anywhere else to go. I wouldn’t last a day in the forest alone.”

Shizuo snorts agreement to this. “You wouldn’t.”

“So I must rely on your gracious hospitality,” Izaya says. “Cold though that may be.”

“I’m working on it,” Shizuo tells him. “You must be comfortable enough with all those blankets, anyway. Once the fire’s going again you won’t want most of those.”

“You’re so generous,” Izaya says. There’s a rustle of motion from the other side of the room, and then the tread of soft footsteps pacing across the floor. Shizuo glances up from the fireplace he’s crouched before to see Izaya padding his way across the floor with just the quilt wrapped around his shoulders again. He’s left the rest of the blankets in a heap alongside Shizuo’s bed where he pulled them, rather than bothering to put them into anything like order again, but Shizuo only has a moment to frown at that before his attention is pulled unavoidably to Izaya.

He shouldn’t look as beautiful as he does. He’s spent the night sleeping wrapped in a blanket on Shizuo’s floor, his perfectly tailored shirt has been replaced with one of Shizuo’s extras, which hangs long at his wrists and too wide over his shoulders, and even his fine pants are smudged with dirt from the day before and wrinkled from the night. But his face is the same as it was in the palace, as it was in the forest, and the change of setting has done nothing to soften the heart-stopping beauty tangled into his lashes and balancing at the curve of his lips. His disheveled attire hardly blunts the razor edge of his looks; it seems rather to hone them, as it draws Shizuo’s attention to the loose weight of his shirt against Izaya’s skin and the elegance in the motion of the steps Izaya is taking with enough deliberate grace to make them seem a dance. Shizuo stares at Izaya for a moment, struck all over again by such an inhuman appearance in the perfectly ordinary structure of his life; and then the fire crackles, and he turns away again to poke at the branches that are beginning to catch into a proper flame.

“This should keep burning for an hour or so,” Shizuo tells Izaya as the other folds to his knees next to him. “You can put on more wood if it looks like it’s starting to fade.”

“I can handle feeding a fire, Shizu-chan,” Izaya says with absolute deadpan. “Where are you going?”

“Hunting,” Shizuo says shortly, and gets to his feet in lieu of remaining so close to Izaya next to him. Izaya turns his head to look up at Shizuo but Shizuo keeps watching the fire rather than running the risk of the heat that will inevitably follow meeting Izaya’s gaze. “I have traps to check. If we’re lucky there’ll be something more than the rabbit from yesterday.”

“Fresh meat,” Izaya says. “How thrilling. Will you bother with cooking it, or should I expect to eat it raw?”

Shizuo growls in the back of his throat and glares down at Izaya, who just tips his head towards Shizuo and lets the crimson shadows of his eyes flicker through his lashes. “I don’t see you offering better suggestions,  _ your highness_.”

Izaya lifts a hand from beneath the weight of the quilt to wave this aside. “No need to stand on formality with me, Shizu-chan.” Shizuo hisses irritation and Izaya grins up at him. “You  _ did _ spare my life. I’ll be happy to grant some presumption of intimacy to you in exchange.”

“Fuck,” Shizuo says, and turns away from Izaya’s smile to stomp towards the door. “Forget it.”

“Get me some apples, Shizu-chan!” Izaya calls after him. Shizuo glares back at Izaya, now leaning against a hand bracing at the floor as he cants his head to gaze back over his shoulder at Shizuo, and he doesn’t bother giving an answer before he pulls open the door to emerge into the crisp clarity of the early-morning air.

The sun has barely crossed the edge of the horizon Shizuo can just pick out through the shadows of the trees, and the same chill that crept in past the corners of the cabin through the hours of the night has a firm hold on the world, enough to cloud Shizuo’s breath to steam before him with every exhale. But Shizuo is running so hot with frustration that he doesn’t realize he left his jacket behind him until he’s a mile away from the cabin, and by then it’s easier to just carry on and let the thought of Izaya’s cutting smile warm him with the embers of irritation.


	9. Declared

Shizuo is shocked to find that he can achieve something like peace inside the cabin, even with Izaya still in it.

He came back from the forest with the pair of rabbits he found in his snares, as well as a pocketful of the apples Izaya had demanded. Shizuo had considered not getting them at all, just out of sheer spite for the casual arrogance in the demand Izaya had leveled for them; but his route took him right to the clearing, and in the fresh air of the early morning the pettiness of ignoring the opportunity made him feel like he would be stooping to Izaya’s level, which is definitely not a place he wants to be. He picked a half-dozen of the shining fruits, stuffing them into his pockets before he turned to make his way back through the woods now stirring with life and to his cabin, where a thin plume of smoke is rising from the chimney to speak to the fire within. Shizuo frowns as he sees this, only thinking as he returns of the giveaway the smoke could be for a second inhabitant in his presumably isolated life; but there is no sign of Shijima or anyone else from the castle, and it’s not as if it’s all that unreasonable for him to leave some small fire glowing to keep the warmth in his home waiting for him upon his return.

Izaya is waiting inside when Shizuo pushes open the door to let himself in. He’s moved from his position in front of the fireplace, although the quilt he was wrapped in remains piled in a heap alongside the hearth; he looks tidier, too, with his hair smoothed back into order and his face washed of any traces of sleep. He’s still wearing Shizuo’s clothes but his pants are brushed clean of dust; he must have taken advantage of Shizuo’s absence to put himself back into the elegant presentation that Shizuo is beginning to recognize the other maintains at all times. He’s done something with the shirt, too, tucked it in or up in such a way that it seems contrarily more flattering than a better fit would offer. When Shizuo comes through the door of the cabin it’s to see Izaya stretched out on his stomach across the length of the bed, his head pillowed on the arm he has folded under himself and one foot lifted to swing idly through the air as if he’s whiling away the time with the motion. He looks very casual, as if he has been in this precise position for long, unthinking hours, and there is absolutely no doubt in Shizuo’s mind that Izaya arranged himself into this appearance no more than five minutes before Shizuo came through the door.

“Ah,” Izaya says, and pushes up onto his elbow so he can brace his chin in his hand as he flickers a smile at Shizuo. “Thank goodness it’s you, Shizu-chan. I was afraid my life was about to be forfeit.”

Shizuo snorts. “Don’t assume it’s not,” he says, although his protest is more for the show of it than anything else, and Izaya flashes a grin at him that says Shizuo’s not the only one who knows that. Shizuo turns back to shut the door and drop the rarely-used lock down across the door frame before he toes off his muddy boots to leave them by the entryway rather than tracking mud across the floor of the cabin. “Have you just been lying around waiting for me to get back?”

“Mm,” Izaya hums, and pushes to sit up on the bed. He tosses his head to throw the shining weight of his hair back from his face; Shizuo sees the motion out of the corner of his eye and deliberately doesn’t turn his head to watch the way the ink-dark locks tumble around Izaya’s cheekbones and catch at the weight of his lashes. “More or less. There’s nothing to  _ do _ here, Shizu-chan, it’s been so dreadfully boring. What do you do to keep yourself from going mad with boredom? Oh, wait.” Izaya purses his lips and tips his head to the side in a show of realization. “That presumes your continued sanity, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Shizuo says. “You’re really one to talk.”

Izaya’s laugh rings brighter in the enclosed space of the cabin. Shizuo can feel the sound of it spill across the back of his neck like the touch of wandering fingers, can feel it tangling through his hair like steam rising through chill air. “Yes, of course,” Izaya says. “The mad prince, naturally. I wonder which of us that makes the more insane?”

“Pretty sure that would be me,” Shizuo says. He unhooks the rabbits from his belt and reaches into his pocket for one of the apples, which he tosses to Izaya with no preamble. It would be satisfying if Izaya indicated the least sign of surprise, even in just a widening of his eyes or a stumble in his motion, but of course he lifts both hands at once to catch the fruit smoothly against his hold.

“You remembered,” Izaya coos. “Aww, Shizu-chan, maybe you really  _ do _ have a heart after all.”

“Shut up,” Shizuo tells him, and turns his back on the edge of Izaya’s smile so he can retrieve a wide bowl and take it to the hearth along with the pair of rabbits in his hold. He’s just drawing the knife from his belt when Izaya calls out from behind him, “Give me a knife, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo tips his head to cast the weight of a scowl over his shoulder. “You  _ seriously _ think that’s going to work after last time?”

Izaya doesn’t even have the grace to look ashamed. He just tilts his head to the side and flickers his smile into the brilliance of a taunt. “You said yourself I wasn’t actually going to hurt you,” he says, in a display of logic more infuriating than anything else. “And I don’t have any reason to get you angry with me now. I just want to cut up my apple.” He gestures with his outstretched hand. “It’s not as if I’d be able to do any real harm even if I wanted to. I know when I’m beat.”

“Do you?” Shizuo asks, but he’s getting to his feet all the same. The hunting knife he leaves on the hearthstone, next to the rabbits waiting to be skinned before they go over the crackle of the flames, but that still leaves him with the smaller blade he keeps at the back of his belt. He draws it free of its sheath and hands it over to Izaya handle-first, keeping a frown firmly fixed on the other as he does so.

Izaya laughs at this attempt at intimidation and lifts a hand to accept the knife. “Thank you,” he drawls. “Your trust in me means  _ so _ much, Shizu-chan.” Shizuo goes on standing over him, still frowning distrust that Izaya meets with a raised eyebrow and a smirk as he turns the knife around in his hand to apply it to the task of slicing through the crisp red peel of the apple. The action appears entirely innocuous, no matter how Shizuo considers it; even so, he stays where he is without letting his guard down as Izaya cuts a thin slice of the apple and draws it free on the tip of the knife.

“I’m flattered by your attention,” he says, speaking with his chin tilted down so his gaze comes through the shadow of his lashes. He brings the apple slice towards his lips without breaking eye contact with Shizuo as he catches the edge between his teeth to take a bite. His lips are as saturated red as the color of the ripe fruit as he smiles and lifts the apple slice towards Shizuo on the point of the knife. “Want some, Shizu-chan?”

Shizuo grimaces. “No,” he says, and turns away to leave Izaya to his apple. Izaya laughs as Shizuo retreats but Shizuo just hunches his shoulders against the sound and returns himself to his position in front of the hearth.

Mockery notwithstanding, Izaya seems reasonably placated by the fruit. He certainly stays quiet as Shizuo works through the familiar process of preparing the rabbits for the fire and bringing the smoldering heat to a greater blaze for cooking. Shizuo’s shoulders ease from their tight-knotted tension as he works, his irritation soothed by the comfortable familiarity of the task, and by the time he is arranging the meat over the fire so it can begin cooking the stress talking to Izaya elicits in him is almost entirely gone. He gets the rabbits settled where he wants them, and sits back on his heels to watch.

There is a long minute of silence, with nothing but the crackling of the fire and the soft sound of Izaya cutting off fresh slices from his apple to interrupt the peace that has fallen over the room; and then Shizuo takes a breath, and speaks clearly into the silence. “What’s your plan?”

The sound of the knife pauses. It’s only for a moment, a brief hesitation in a soft sound; Shizuo wouldn’t hear it if he weren’t listening for it, but he is, and he hears the pause as well as the sound of Izaya resuming his motion with a little more force. “What are you talking about?”

“You were going to goad me into killing you, right?” Shizuo says bluntly. He tips his head to glance back over his shoulder at Izaya, now sitting cross-legged at the edge of the bed as he ducks his head in apparent rapt attention to the slide of the knife through the half apple he’s holding. “That didn’t work out. So what now?”

Izaya smiles without looking up. “What, you don’t want to keep a renegade prince captive in your cabin in the middle of the woods?” he drawls. “We  _ really _ need to work on your imagination, Shizu-chan, you’re giving up so many opportunities already.” Shizuo growls in the back of his throat and Izaya laughs.

“I’m not intending to impose on you forever,” he says, cutting another slice of fruit free with an elegant motion of his wrist. “I assure you, my stay in your  _ lovely _ abode will be as temporary as I can make it.” He brings the apple to his mouth to take a thoughtful bite before he continues. “I’m intending to return myself to the place I belong.”

It takes Shizuo a moment to parse this. “You want to go back to the castle?” he blurts. “You’ll be  _ killed_.”

“Astute observation,” Izaya says. “But not quite what I had in mind. Evidence to the contrary, I am not overly pleased with the idea of dying, and least of all at the hand of my loving cousin.” He pulls this last into a mockery punctuated by another bite from the apple slice. “My return need not be a death sentence, should I play my cards right.” He tosses his head and flickers a smile in Shizuo’s direction. “There is  _ great _ appeal in a story of injustice, especially when it is presented with the right cast. My cousin holds great sway within the castle, but even she can hardly sustain her position against a mob with royalty as their figurehead.”

Shizuo stares at Izaya. For a moment there is silence in the cabin, but for the crackling of the fire; then Shizuo takes a ragged breath and speaks. “You  _ are _ trying to seize power for yourself.”

“I am now,” Izaya says immediately. “I would have been thrilled to go on living a quiet life in the castle if my cousin had allowed me that freedom.” Shizuo doubts Izaya’s ability to lead a life that is any kind of quiet, regardless of his location and situation, but he doesn’t comment on this as Izaya continues. “She’s the one who brought you in to have me assassinated.” He brings the apple still on the point of the knife to his lips so he can catch it in his teeth and slide the point free with a flourish. “If she wants to play this game, I’m absolutely ready to win it.”

“Your family sounds great,” Shizuo deadpans. “Are all royal relationships like this?”

Izaya shrugs. “So far as I’ve experienced.”

Shizuo frowns. “That’s awful.” The fire crackles alongside him; he turns back to adjust the rabbits just starting to brown over the flames. “I’d rather be a huntsman, if that’s what comes of living in a palace.”

“Yes, your opinion is very well-informed,” Izaya drawls. It’s intended as teasing but there’s a lack of teeth that lets Shizuo content himself with rolling his eyes and staying where he is. After a moment of silence he hears Izaya shift against the bed before he speaks in a deliberately light tone. “So what’s your verdict?”

Shizuo looks back from the glow of the fire. Izaya is looking down at the apple in his hand again, his gaze fixed on the fruit as if it’s the most interesting focal point for his attention at the moment. The angle of his head lets his hair fall over his face to hide the spark of his eyes and the shadow of his lashes, but Shizuo can still see Izaya’s mouth perfectly well, from the set of his lips pressing together to the tension that has settled itself against the line of his jaw as he works the knife carefully through the curve of the apple. Shizuo frowns. “What?”

“What side are you on, Shizu-chan?” Izaya brings the knife through the apple and draws it free to score along the core. “Are you with me or are you with my cousin?”

“I’m not on anyone’s side,” Shizuo growls. “I just want to be left in peace.”

“That’s no longer an option,” Izaya says. “Someone’s going to end up on the throne, and your decision started to matter as soon as my lovely cousin called you to meet with her.” He snaps the slice of apple free and picks it up before lifting his gaze to meet Shizuo’s frown. “The fate of the country lies in your hands, Shizu-chan, however unwilling they may be.”

Shizuo grimaces in reply to this statement but he can’t deny the accuracy. He had felt it himself as soon as he saw Shijima standing in front of those pitch-black horses: his peaceful life has been scattered by the royal attention that has focused on him, and he is unlikely to shed it with a growl and a protest. He’s trapped by the situation, pulled along into the tumble of politics whether he likes it or not, and that makes him a player in a game he has never wanted to engage in.

Izaya is still watching him. His smile has vanished like it was never there; his gaze is as intent as the set of his mouth, fixed on Shizuo like he’s forgotten the apple slice in his fingers and the knife in his hold. Shizuo stares at him for a long moment, taking in this new, intent expression on Izaya’s face; and then he ducks away and shakes his head.

“Like I said, I’m not going to kill you,” he says simply. “Your cousin wants you dead and I won’t be obeying that command. Ever.” He reaches to adjust one of the rabbits again, although it doesn’t need it. “If that means I’m on your side, then I am.”

Izaya’s laugh rings bright against the ceiling overhead. “My first follower,” he purrs. “At least I know I can have all the beasts of the forests at my command, if I want to make a particularly outrageous entrance.” Shizuo grimaces and pokes at the fire with enough force that one of the logs breaks and sends a cascade of sparks to flatten to ash at the top of the fireplace, but he doesn’t turn back around, and Izaya shows enough royal grace to let the subject stand at that.


	10. Recognized

“Keep that  _ up_,” Shizuo hisses as he reaches out to drag the hood of the cloak Izaya is wrapped in farther forward over his face. “Are you  _ trying _ to get yourself recognized?”

Izaya tips his head to the side to give Shizuo a flat look that is not at all blunted by the cloak now half-covering his face. “Do you listen to anything anyone says, or is it just me that you ignore?” he says, and lifts his hands to adjust the hood farther back on his head. “No one has the least idea who I am. I’ve never been anywhere near your tiny village in my life, it’s not like people will look at me and instantly know I’m the supposedly-dead prince of the castle.”

Shizuo’s not so certain about that. It’s true that he didn’t even know there  _ was _ a prince in the looming gray castle until he was told so directly by the queen herself; if put to the point, he isn’t sure he knew they had a queen and not a king until Shijima had told him so. But Izaya is striking to so much as glimpse, the elegant beauty of his features rather heightened than otherwise by the rough clothes he is borrowing, and Shizuo can feel nervous adrenaline running in waves across his skin with every step they take along the path leading into the village. Izaya’s face will draw eyes, even if those gazes don’t come with any immediate recognition, and he so clearly doesn’t belong in the structure of the village that there is no question gossip will follow in his path. There might be no one in the whole of the village who has ever seen the royal family at close enough to recognize the fine features and dramatic coloring that Izaya carries with such effortless grace, but Shizuo would prefer to take as few chances as possible in the outing to which he has submitted.

He did his best. Izaya is wearing his own breeches, still, mostly because Shizuo’s are so laughably large that they would surely draw more attention than even the unusually fine fabric of Izaya’s own, but they are offset by the coarse shirt draped loose over his chest and the whole is further obscured by a cloak that Shizuo has occasionally worn in the coldest days and that could cover Izaya from head to foot in a swath of shadow. Could, more than is, because Izaya has failed to keep it closed in front of him as Shizuo suggested, and he keeps lifting his head in a way that tips the hood of the cloak away from his features and seems to call the illumination of the midday sunlight down to kiss color into his lips and shine off the gleaming black of his hair tumbled around his face. Shizuo’s jaw has been tightening on increasing tension the closer they draw to the village, until he can feel the ache lancing all through his hunched shoulders as they clear the farthest outskirts and approach the rows of shops lining the main street running through town.

“Don’t look so panicked,” Izaya advises. He is putting his own suggestion to immediate use, it seems; there is no self-consciousness at all to his easy stride, no sense of secrecy in the casual glance he is casting around him. “People always pay more attention to those who act guilty.”

Shizuo growls in his throat. “Only guilty people need to know how to  _ pretend _ to be innocent.”

“Is that your excuse for why you’re so bad at it?” Izaya fires back with no trace of apology. “Remember that, I’m sure it’ll make for excellent comfort when we’re both waiting for the headsman’s axe.”

Shizuo hisses protest. “That’s  _ not _ what’s going to happen.”

“You’re right,” Izaya says, with such speed that Shizuo is startled to silence for a moment before the other continues. “Beheading is reserved for nobility.” He tips his head to look back over his shoulder at Shizuo following in his wake. “I suppose you’d just be strung up on a gallows like a common thief.”

“Shut  _ up_,” Shizuo snaps.

“No need to be so self-conscious about it,” Izaya says as he turns back to continue his idle consideration of the scattered buildings around them. “ _I _ was only worth getting butchered in the woods like an animal, after all.”

“ _Quiet_ ” and Shizuo lunges forward to seize at Izaya’s arm and shove him to the side of the main pathway. There’s no one in earshot that he can see, even with the uncaring clarity of Izaya’s volume, but there is a relief just to the physical expression of some part of the tension that has been winding itself into his body since Izaya first stepped out of the door of his cabin.

Shizuo’s more forceful than he means to be. Izaya moves with such easy grace that it’s hard to remember how little strength he carries; he stumbles at Shizuo’s shove, and Shizuo has to follow him just to keep from dropping Izaya to the ground outright. Shizuo reclaims his balance in a pair of steps, though Izaya is still trying to catch himself; by then they’re far enough to the side of the street that he just grips at Izaya’s other shoulder to bracket the other man between his hands and carries them into the shadows alongside one of the buildings in the village, this one an inn that hardly ever has use for more than half of the four beds available. Izaya grabs at Shizuo’s sleeve to catch himself, and turns his head to try to see where he’s going, but Shizuo just advances until Izaya’s shoulders are pinned to the wall of the inn and Shizuo can lean in over him to give with his shoulders the disguise Izaya refuses to take advantage of himself.

“Keep your mouth  _ shut _ about that,” Shizuo hisses. Izaya’s head is tipped back against the wall behind him and the hood of his cloak has fallen back completely from the shine of his dark hair. There’s no hesitation or indication of the least fear in the gaze he turns up at Shizuo over him; his eyes look nearly black, with Shizuo’s shoulders to block them from the radiant illumination of the sunlight. Shizuo takes a breath in an attempt to calm his temper but it works as well as such attempts ever do, which is to say not at all; he still feels like his blood has turned to fire, as if he can’t catch his breath for the heat that is raging through him with every thundering beat of his heart. “You might think everyone here is some idiot farmer but people are going to start paying attention if you’re talking about murder plots and assassinations. Just because  _ I _ might not listen to something I overheard doesn’t mean other people won’t.”

Izaya doesn’t look particularly alarmed by Shizuo’s obvious anger or by the force with which he is presently being pinned to a wall. He just gazes up at Shizuo, the sharp lines of his features softened to something unreadable by the shadows around them until Shizuo can’t tell if Izaya is angry, or flattered, or attentive. He sets his jaw tighter and waits with ill-disguised patience for the other’s response, letting the scowl on his face speak more clearly for him than he will ever be able to wrestle from words.

Finally Izaya takes a breath and speaks. “Point taken, Shizu-chan,” he says. “Not everyone here is as oblivious as you are.”

Shizuo lets that dig go as one that he at least deserves. “They’re not,” he says, and he lets his hold on Izaya go so the other can straighten from where he was leaning against the wall. “And I’d rather we had as little attention as possible on you.” Izaya scoffs a laugh in the back of his throat, as if he doubts the success of this attempt before it’s begun, but when Shizuo steps away from him Izaya reaches to pull the hood of his cloak up over his face before Shizuo can reach for it, and he doesn’t try to inch it back as they move to return to their path down the main street.

They are coming towards the main part of the village now. The inn is one of the furthest buildings, set as if to welcome the first sign of rare visitors; it’s only farther along that the shops appear, the greater part of them formed from the front half of buildings that double as living accomodations for their owners. Nearly all the shops lining the street are formed that way, from the blacksmith’s forge to the fletcher Shizuo can see working over the shaft of an arrow at the far end of the street, but when Shizuo reaches for Izaya’s elbow it’s to steer them towards one of the only exceptions, a small, well-kept shop arranged nearly at the end of the rows of buildings that form the village itself.

Ruri is within when they arrive. Some of the other shopkeepers are present the greater part of the day and just leave the door between the front business and the back living space open to hear the call of a customer, but since Kasuka and Ruri moved into a separate house in the quiet fringes of the village after their marriage they both keep strictly consistent hours of work. Shizuo would like to see Kasuka, if only to nod a hello, but Izaya’s boots are in perfectly good repair, however excessive their elegance. It’s clothes they need, and in the absence of any sewing skills on Shizuo’s part that means they need a tailor.

Ruri looks up as Shizuo comes through the door. “Welcome,” she says, in a perfectly flat tone that Shizuo knows from experience is neutrality more than distaste. She blinks recognition at seeing Shizuo, as if thinking distantly about being surprised, before her gaze slides past him to Izaya stepping through the doorway behind him. Her eyebrows lift, her eyes widen fractionally; but she doesn’t say anything to give voice to the shock that is the most clear reaction Shizuo think he has ever seen from her. “To both of you.”

“Hi Ruri,” Shizuo says, aware that some of his frustration with Izaya is still lingering on his voice and too tired to succeed in stripping it free. “I need to get some clothes made.”

“Of course,” Ruri says as she rises to her feet. “For you or for…?”

“For him,” Shizuo says, and reaches out to press a hand to Izaya’s shoulder to indicate. “He’s--” and his voice dies on Izaya’s name. He knows he shouldn’t invoke the name of the crown prince; it’s unusual enough to draw comment, even from someone who doesn’t know anything at all about the line of succession. But he hadn’t prepared to give a fake name, and finding himself on the point of it now his mind promptly forgets every name he has ever known.

“I’m Nakura,” Izaya says, speaking immediately and easily into the stall of Shizuo’s silence. He lifts a hand to push his hood back to reveal a beaming smile, which he couples with a hand outstretched to shake Ruri’s. Shizuo would protest this reveal, except that he’s too grateful to Izaya for covering his giveaway hesitation, and he supposes he probably can’t get away with keeping Izaya hidden for the whole of this conversation. “I was travelling through the woods when I got myself quite lost. It’s only thanks to Shizu-chan’s intervention that I still have a life to call my own.”

“Ah,” Ruri says, and politely shakes Izaya’s hand. She doesn’t so much as bat an eye at the nickname, even though Shizuo’s face heats at the lilt of Izaya’s voice over it. “I’m glad he could help.”

“Not as glad as I am,” Izaya laughs smoothly as he lets her hand go. “Unfortunately I ruined my shirt when I got tangled up in a patch of briars. Shizu-chan said that you’re the best tailor in the village.”

“I am the only tailor in the village,” Ruri says calmly. “But I can certainly make you a shirt.”

“Better make it two,” Izaya declares. “And an extra pair of pants. I’d hate to be unprepared in a similar crisis in the future.”

Ruri ducks her head in ready acknowledgment of this. “Of course,” she says. “Do you have a particular kind of fabric in mind for these?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Izaya says, as easily as if Shizuo isn’t even in the room and has no say at all in the clothes he is reasonably sure he will be paying for. “Can you show me what you have available?”

Ruri nods again. “I’ll return shortly,” she says, and turns to step through the door to the back room. Izaya straightens from his lean over the counter, his smile easing as Ruri disappears through the door; as it latches shut behind her he turns his head to cut the bright of his eyes towards Shizuo standing next to him.

“Your village tailor is  _ striking_,” Izaya drawls. “I’d expect a face like that more in my circles than in yours.”

“Ruri?” Shizuo lifts his head to frown at the door after the young woman. It’s true that Ruri has always looked very nice alongside Kasuka, and Shizuo knows that Kasuka is generally considered to be one of the handsomest men in the village; it follows that Ruri must be a remarkable beauty, although this isn’t something Shizuo has ever paid much attention to. He shakes his head and looks back to Izaya. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Izaya’s eyebrows lift. “You didn’t  _ notice_?”

“No.” Shizuo shifts uncomfortably. “She’s my sister-in-law. I never really knew her before she married Kasuka.”

He feels this ought to be plenty of explanation for the situation, but Izaya just goes on staring at him for a long moment before he huffs a disbelieving laugh. “You really  _ are _ oblivious, aren’t you, Shizu-chan? Do you notice  _ anything _ around you at all?”

Shizuo scowls. “I noticed  _ yo_\--” He breaks himself off sharply, before he can add more fuel to Izaya’s already-grandiose sense of self, but Izaya’s face illuminates with a grin that says too clearly that Shizuo’s attempt came too late. Shizuo turns his head away, grimacing against the teasing that is surely about to strike, and it’s then that the door to the back room opens again and Ruri reemerges with an armful of cloth and a perfect distraction.

“Ooh,” Izaya croons, and leans back in over the counter at once. “Let me see that blue, there, at the top.” Shizuo looks back at the other but Izaya is tipped forward and apparently fully invested in the subject at hand. Ruri glances at Shizuo as Izaya is sliding his hand over the fabric, and Shizuo is sure she sees the flush still burning across his cheeks, but she doesn’t say anything, and Shizuo is as grateful to her for that as he is unsurprised by her restraint.


	11. Introduced

“You  _ must _ have more of a plan than that,” Shizuo insists. “You seriously intend to just walk up to the castle and demand that your cousin give it back? You’ll be slaughtered.”

“ _We_ ,” Izaya says, gesturing with his hand to make this point rather than turning around to look at Shizuo as he paces across the cabin floor. “ _We _ will be slaughtered, please, Shizu-chan. A lesser man might doubt your commitment to my cause, and where would I be if my first subject were to turn on me?” Shizuo rolls his eyes in answer to this but Izaya just flickers a smile over his shoulder and continues in his path pacing deliberately along the line between two of the floorboards spanning the length of the cabin. “And I keep telling you. It’s a matter of numbers, even you should be able to understand that much. Or do you struggle with counting along with everything else?”

“Shut up,” Shizuo says. “It’s not  _ just _ a matter of numbers. You’re talking about villagers, farmers and townsfolk with no more weapons than walking sticks and hoes.”

“And hunting knives,” Izaya puts in.

“Which will be useless against armor and archers,” Shizuo continues, scowling at Izaya as he pushes along his point. “I’m not going to do murder at your cousin’s word, but I’m not going to let you lead all of my village to destroy themselves against the gates of the palace.”

“You give the palace too much credit,” Izaya says. “I know you must be used to gaping up in awe at it but it’s really nothing more than a building like this one.”

“Made of  _ stone_,” Shizuo says. “And filled with  _ soldiers_.”

Izaya lifts a hand, one finger upraised as he pivots on his heel to look back at Shizuo. “Made of stone,” he says. “And filled with  _ people_.” He lets his hand drop so he can clasp it with the other behind his back as he takes another step backwards across the floor without breaking away from the smirk he’s turning on Shizuo. “And I am  _ very _ good at dealing with people.”

Shizuo snorts. “Is that why they all want you dead?”

Izaya grins. “Just like you do,” he says. “How has your murderous rage been going for you, Shizu-chan?”

Shizuo grimaces and shakes his head. “The fact that I haven’t tried to kill you lately does  _ not _ mean I like you.”

“But you are helping me,” Izaya points out. “Feeding me. Dressing me.” He catches at the loose front of the dark shirt Ruri produced for him after their first meeting, and which fits him better than Shizuo had known the rough fabric could be coaxed to. Izaya lets his hands fall to his sides and turns them palm-up towards Shizuo as he takes another step backwards. “Plotting with me.”

“This is  _ not _ plotting,” Shizuo protests. “I just can’t get you to shut  _ up_.”

“You could always tie me up and stuff a gag in my mouth,” Izaya suggests, with a speed that Shizuo finds more unsettling than otherwise. “If you were  _ that _ desperate to get control over me there are all kinds of things you could do. I could make suggestions, even.” Shizuo frowns and turns away. In his periphery he can see Izaya tilt his head to the side and tip his weight like he’s trying to peer past the shadows across Shizuo’s face. “Is that a no to my generous offer?”

“Shut up,” Shizuo growls. “You know I’m not going to do that.”

Izaya smiles wide enough that Shizuo can see it without lifting his head to look and straightens. “Shame,” he says. “I keep telling you, we could have some fun if you were a little more open-minded.”

Shizuo grimaces. “Open to  _ what_.”

Izaya shrugs with more eloquence than the gesture usually conveys. “Anything you can imagine,” he says. “More importantly, anything  _ I _ can imagine, since your dreams seem to fall into a rather narrow scope.”

“Listen,” Shizuo says, pushing to get to his feet from the chair he’s sitting in at the small table that serves for meals. “If  _ you _ would just--” but his flare of temper chills itself to silence, his focus dropping away from the banter with Izaya at the rattle of a distant sound. Shizuo lifts his head to trail it, his forehead creasing on attention as he tries to place the noise still too faint to recognize but drawing closer with each breath.

“If I would…?” Izaya prompts. “Come on, Shizu-chan, I’m waiting for instructions. Don’t leave me in suspense.”

Shizuo lifts a hand to wave him to silence. “Shut up.”

Izaya heaves a heavy sigh. “Like I  _ just _ said,” he drawls. “If you want me to be quiet, you’re going to have to do better--” and Shizuo turns away from his attention outside to scowl hard and stride around the edge of the table and towards Izaya at the other side of the room. Izaya rocks back onto his heels, his eyebrows lifting on surprise as his words cut off, but Shizuo is moving quickly and there is no real room to give Izaya the space to retreat. Shizuo catches a hand at the back of the other’s head, and presses the other palm flush over Izaya’s parted lips to stifle his speech, and turns his head to frown attention at the sound outside the cabin. They stand there for a moment, Shizuo fixing Izaya to enforced silence under the weight of his hands and his own breathing as quiet as he can make it; and then there is another rattle of sound, this time accompanied by the creak of a hinge and a voice too muffled to make out words but close enough to recognize, and Shizuo’s eyes open wide with the rush of alarmed adrenaline that hits him.

“ _Damn it_ ,” he hisses, and drops his hand from Izaya’s mouth so he can shove the other forward towards the back of the cabin with the grip he has on the back of his neck. “Go, get  _ out_.”

Izaya stumbles as Shizuo pushes him, his balance knocked out from under his feet by the force of the other’s motion, but he catches himself rapidly enough to turn and frown back in Shizuo’s direction. “ _What? _ Why?” There’s the sound of a door closing -- a carriage door, Shizuo is sure of it now -- and Izaya lifts his head in answer. His expression goes blank for a moment; then he looks back to Shizuo, the bright of his eyes hardening with the flare of temper that angles at his shoulders and tightens at his jaw. “What, is your lover here to have her way with you?”

“Fuck,” Shizuo growls, and takes a step towards Izaya at the other side of the cabin. “ _No_.”

Izaya steps sideways as quickly as Shizuo approaches, dodging the other’s approach with a lightness of foot at odds with the strain visibly building in the tilt of his chin and the tension of his fingers. “Are you taking a  _ noblewoman _ into your bed? Shizu-chan, how much of a beast  _ are _ you, that someone would be willing to put up with  _ this _ just for the pleasures of your body?”

“We don’t have time for this,” Shizuo insists. “Get  _ out_,  _ now_. I don’t want to have to explain you to--”

“Your  _ toy_?” Izaya snaps, and then laughs with more of an edge on his voice than Shizuo has heard since the first day they met. “Wait, I suppose she must be keeping you as a pet. That would make her your owner, wouldn’t it?”

“It’s not a woman,” Shizuo shouts. “And he’s  _ not _ my lover, I just--”

“Shizuo!” comes from the doorway, the shout made more clear halfway through by the front door of the cabin swinging open. Shizuo twists at once, taking a step back in an attempt to hide Izaya behind the span of his shoulders, which Izaya immediately counters by taking a step to the side. Shizuo grimaces and glances back at him but it’s too late; the visitor is already coming through the door, followed closely by the taller, slender figure of the betrothed he very recently took to wife. He turns his head to look around the cabin, bearing the brilliant, enormous smile that Shizuo only very rarely sees him without, and never so long as he has Celty with him. “We’ve come to see how you’re getting on out in the woods by yourself! You know you don’t have to stay out here, anytime you want to join us just say the word and we can…” and his words trail off as he turns his head to see Shizuo, and Izaya standing just at his shoulder.

They all stare at each other for a moment, the two newcomers in the doorway and Shizuo and Izaya together on the far side of the cabin. Then the newest arrival blinks, and huffs a laugh, and beams at Izaya. “Is that Prince Izaya? I had heard he was dead but he’s looking quite excellent for a corpse!” He turns the force of his smile on Shizuo. “Is there a new story here for us, Shizuo?”

Izaya has gone utterly still at Shizuo’s side; Shizuo supposes it would be too much to hope that the other’s ceaseless chatter would continue now, when conversation would actually be helpful. Still, it’s not as if there’s anything they can offer by way of denial, at least at this point. Shizuo draws a breath, and heaves a sigh, and lifts a hand to ruffle through his hair.

“Yeah, basically,” he says, and drops his hand to gesture over his shoulder. “Shinra, Celty, this is Orihara Izaya, the...crown prince of the kingdom, I guess.” Shizuo turns his head to look at Izaya, who lifts his chin to stare back at him. “Izaya, this is Celty and her husband Shinra.” He sighs and looks back out at the visitors, Shinra beaming and Celty staring in silent shock. “Lord and Lady Kishitani.”


	12. Clarified

“Oh  _ wow_,” Shinra laughs. “She really tried to have Shizuo  _ kill _ you? That’s absolutely dreadful!”

Shizuo grimaces. He’s grown relatively accustomed to Shinra over the years they have known each other, and by extension to the complete disregard the other has for any kind of expected emotional reaction to dramatic statements, but he feels all his original discomfort in full force with Izaya’s presence to draw it to his attention. “Shinra, just--”

“Oh yes,” Izaya says, sounding as casually amused as Shinra does. “I think she may have even thought he would do it.” He tosses his head to sweep his hair back from his face and shrugs dramatically. “Then again, she never  _ has _ been a very good judge of character.”

Shizuo revises his embarrassment on Shinra’s behalf into general irritation with the joint insanity the other two seem to be working out between them. At least Celty looks appropriately horrified, so much so that Shizuo is rather regretting letting Izaya tell the story in its full, unvarnished reality. Shinra, on the other hand, hasn’t so much as batted an eye at any of the details Izaya has seen fit to offer. Shizuo isn’t really surprised by that -- he’s known Shinra too long to still be holding to expectations of empathy from the other -- but he does feel that there might be some reasonable expression of surprise at finding the missing crown prince living in the cabin of your childhood friend. He is mostly relieved that Shinra is taking it so well -- it’s not as if he had any idea what to do if he  _ didn’t _ \-- but it’s almost a disappointment to have the revelation of this secret be so casually anticlimactic.

“That’s remarkable,” Shinra says, shaking his head as he falls back from the fascinated forward lean he has been sustaining through Izaya’s recital. “And so you ended up living here in the woods with Shizuo?”

Izaya lifts one shoulder in another shrug. “It seemed the best option at the time,” he says. “It’s at least  _ slightly _ more comfortable than camping in the forest.”

Shizuo turns to scowl at Izaya. “ _Hey_.”

“I’m not complaining,” Izaya says, lifting his hands in self-defense without looking away from the attention he has given to Shinra instead of Shizuo. “Shivering on the floor in front of the fireplace is still better than freezing to death waiting to be eaten by wild animals.”

“You’ve been sleeping on the floor?” Shinra says.

Celty looks shocked. “Shizuo!” she exclaims, finally turning away from Izaya to stare wide-eyed at Shizuo. “You can’t treat royalty like that! You don’t know what he could have done to you!”

“It’s  _ my home_,” Shizuo protests. “There’s only one bed. I didn’t  _ want _ him here.”

“I can’t imagine why not!” Shinra says. If it were anyone else the words would sound sarcastic. Delivered with the laugh he grants them, they sound as sincere as anything else he could say. “Hiding an escaped prince from the clutches of an evil queen is all very heroic, you know.”

Shizuo groans. “I don’t  _ want _ to be a hero,” he says. “I just want to live my life.”

“It is,” Izaya says, sounding thoughtful and completely ignoring Shizuo. Shizuo frowns at him but Izaya has an elbow braced at the table and his chin in his hand as he gazes thoughtfully into the middle distance. “It makes for an excellent story, anyway. I wonder if we could get him to look the part?”

Three pairs of eyes focus on Shizuo, who rocks back onto his heels from where he’s been standing alongside the table for lack of a fourth chair for him to sit on. “What?” he growls. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“It would take a lot of work,” Shinra observes. “Shizuo doesn’t exactly have the knight errant look.”

“I think Shizuo has a very noble character,” Celty says, which display of loyalty Shizuo would appreciate more if he weren’t seriously alarmed with the direction the conversation is taking.

Izaya waves his hand to brush this aside without blinking away from his attention to Shizuo before him. “It’s not a matter of character,” he says. “Power is all about appearances, and he doesn’t have them.” He cocks his head to the side, his lashes dipping as his gaze slides up and down the length of Shizuo’s body. “Although there might be some potential there, with the right clothes and a bath.” He looks up to Shizuo’s hair and makes a face. “Maybe a few baths.”

“Shut up,” Shizuo says automatically. “I  _ bathe_.” Izaya’s lips curve onto a smile and Shizuo grimaces and waves his hand to shove the conversation aside. “That doesn’t matter anyway. What are you talking about?”

Shinra and Izaya stare at him. “His coup,” Shinra says, at the exact same moment Izaya says “My coup.” Shizuo debates which of them to glare at and settles on Izaya, on the basic premise that Izaya has been the cause of more trouble in two days than Shinra has managed in twenty years, but it is Shinra who ends up speaking while Izaya settles a smile across his lips and angles his head to look up through his lashes in answer to Shizuo’s scowl.

“He’s going to need a story to mobilize the common people to his side,” Shinra says, as calmly as if this is a perfectly logical conclusion to come to from the minimal array of information he has been given. “Charisma and good looks will go a long way, but a noble rescuer would add flair to the motivation. Even better if it’s someone they know, someone who is completely separate from the royal family and got dragged into everything against his will but still made the right decision. It gives the common folk someone to identify with, someone they can see themselves in.” He turns his head to beam a brilliant smile at Shizuo. “And since  _ you _ chose to take the prince’s side they’ll want to too.”

“Hang on,” Shizuo says, lifting his hands to halt this train of conversation before it goes any further into pure invention. “All I did was choose not to  _ murder someone_. That’s not the same as supporting him to take control of the country.”

“But it is.” That’s Izaya, his voice cutting to break through Shinra and Shizuo’s conversation. When Shizuo turns back to look Izaya is slouching back into his chair, the perfect picture of graceful self-assurance. He would look relaxed, even, if it weren’t for the intensity of the gaze he’s turning on Shizuo. They stare at each other for a moment; then Izaya dips his lashes to soften into a blink, and curves his mouth onto a smile, and cocks his head to the side. “My cousin saw to that with her ill-advised gamble. She thought you were a monster she could keep on a leash and direct where she saw fit.” He shrugs. “Turns out you’re a wild animal who doesn’t appreciate being domesticated. You balking her control gives me the perfect evidence of her instability.” He spreads his arms and smiles. “Who in their right mind could  _ possibly _ want to kill me?”

Shizuo grimaces. “I wonder.”

“So we’ll present Shizuo as the heroic villager who saw through the schemes of the evil queen,” Shinra says, leaning in over the table again. Izaya goes on smiling at Shizuo for a moment before he turns his head to grant his attention to Shinra once again. “And you’re the disenfranchised prince, your position stolen by a scheming cousin not content with your birthright and determined to take your life as well.”

“Before I became a symbol to the people of freedom from her oppression,” Izaya says. “Exactly.”

“ _We_?” Shizuo repeats, but neither Shinra nor Izaya shows any sign of so much as hearing him.

“Fascinating,” Shinra says, and lifts his hand to brace his chin against it. “It’s an interesting idea. It could even work, under the right circumstances.”

“I can get those,” Izaya says. “I’m  _ very _ good at choosing my moment.”

“Hm,” Shinra says. “You’ll need to look the part.”

Izaya waves a hand to dismiss this. “I have that under control,” he says. “There’s an  _ excellent _ tailor in this village, did you know?”

Shizuo scowls and takes a step forward. “ _No_ ,” he says. “You’ve already got me tangled up in this, you’re not going to drag Kasuka’s wife into it as well.”

Izaya and Shinra both turn to stare at him. They look completely different, between the familiar normalcy of Shinra’s features and the artistic perfection of Izaya’s, but for a moment their expressions of surprise are so identically matched that they could pass for brothers.

“Kasuka’s  _ wife_?” Izaya repeats. “ _That’s _ what you’re worried about?”

“Oh, of course,” Shinra says, as if he’s only just recalling the connection. “Shizuo is very protective of his brother. That’s part of why he lives on the outskirts of the village, you know, to keep his reputation from interfering with Kasuka’s success. It’s all very sweet, I suppose, though  _ I _ would never be so hands-off about someone I cared about. If  _ I _ were trying to support Celty--”

“Shut up, Shinra,” Shizuo snaps without looking away from Izaya. “What the hell do you mean, Izaya?”

“Shizuo!” Celty gasps, sounding scandalized and looking more so. “His Highness is the  _ crown prince_, you can’t address him--”

“That tailor’s a lot more than just a pretty village girl,” Izaya says right over Celty’s protests, and without looking away from Shizuo’s gaze. “ _You _ might be too oblivious to have noticed, Shizu-chan, but the resemblance is truly striking.” He turns to give Shinra his attention as he leans back in over the table. “You should know, at least. You’re a lord, you must have attended court functions at least a few times, no matter how much of a misanthrope you play at being.”

Shinra nods immediately. “Oh yes,” he says. “It’s been some time since I succeeded in my life’s goal of marrying Celty and my home became more of a palace than any castle could be, but I used to attend on Her Majesty once or twice a year. And you, I suppose, on those occasions that you were present.”

Izaya smiles like he’s baring a blade. “There were always a few events she couldn’t keep me away from,” he says. “You recall meeting Her Majesty the Queen, I assume?”

Shinra nods enthusiastically. “Oh yes,” he says. “She was quite the beauty. Nothing on my Celty, of course” with a hand outstretched to press affection to Celty’s gloved fingers, “but generally considered to be striking in her own right. Which effect was of course aided by her tendency to keep you away as much as possible. The comparison doesn’t fall in her favor there, I’m afraid.”

“Yes,” Izaya says. “I’m rarely a benefit to my dear cousin.” He pushes back from his lean over the table to tilt into a show of relaxation in his chair again. “In fact she seems rather to regret  _ any _ comparison to her immediate family. It’s been some time, of course, but I’m hardly the first of her bloodline that she has seen fit to remove from her vicinity.”

“That’s right,” Shinra says, as if he’s just recalling a long-forgotten story. “There was a rumor about a sister years ago, wasn’t there?”

“A half-sister,” Izaya corrects. “And more than a rumor, I can confirm that much.”

“What?” Shizuo is more thoroughly lost than he has been through all of his previous conversations with Izaya, which is something of a feat. He thinks he might be more impressed by it were he not so scowlingly frustrated. “What are you talking about?”

“ _Oh_ ,” Shinra says. “You mean…?”

Izaya cants his head to the side and smiles at Shizuo. “Take a guess, Shizu-chan.”

“No,” Shizuo says immediately. “If you have something to say just say it. I’m not going to play your little game.”

Izaya heaves a sigh and shakes his head. “You’re no fun, Shizu-chan,” he says. Shizuo grimaces towards a frown and Izaya lifts his hand to forestall his protest before it’s begun. “It’s quite straightforward, really.” He drops his hand to his lap and turns his head up to smile at Shizuo. “Your dear brother’s wife is the half-sister of Queen Saika, exiled over a decade ago at the age of fourteen.” He lifts his eyebrows towards his hairline and cocks his head to the side to beam at Shizuo. “Is that clear enough for you, Shizu-chan?”


	13. Negotiated

Shizuo leans back against the wall behind him and turns his head to frown at Kasuka. “Did  _ you _ know?”

Kasuka has been very quiet since he arrived with Ruri in the carriage Shinra ordered sent out to collect them. In someone else this might be a sign of discomfort, or even of anger; Kasuka just looks perfectly calm, as much now as Shizuo has ever seen him, as if being summoned to his brother’s cabin to meet the presumed-dead crown prince of the kingdom is an absolutely ordinary part of life. Even Izaya’s blunt “Welcome, Your Highness” earned only a blink from Kasuka at Ruri’s side, and he answers Shizuo’s question now with a tilt of his head into the easy admission of a nod.

“Yeah,” he says, with as much calm as if he’s talking about the storm that broke a few days ago, or Shizuo’s unfortunate tendency to snap full limbs off trees when his temper gets the better of him. “She told me a while ago but I was pretty sure before that, too.”

Shizuo blinks surprise. “You knew before?”

“Yeah,” Kasuka says again, still watching Ruri sitting at Shizuo’s table across from Izaya’s bladed smile and sparkling eyes. “She doesn’t look like anyone else in the village and she was really jumpy when she first arrived. She’s always stayed away from outside visitors and she doesn’t like being in crowds, even during the harvest festivals.” He shrugs. “It was pretty easy to put the pieces together.”

Shizuo doesn’t agree. He’s not completely oblivious, in spite of Izaya’s taunting, and it seems much easier to him to credit Kasuka’s perception than undermine his own. But Kasuka does seem truly calm, as he has seemed in the face of every crisis Shizuo has ever watched him confront, and that is enough to ease the greater part of the strain from Shizuo’s shoulders.

“Oh,” he says. “Okay.” He pauses, wondering if he should say anything else, and finally contents himself with shrugging and looking back to the table. “That’s alright, then.”

If Kasuka is radiating calm that seems to glow straight through even Shizuo’s tight-wound strain, it is having no effect on Izaya. He’s leaning all the way in over the table, both elbows braced before him and his face fixed into a smile so obviously false that it doesn’t even illuminate the color of his eyes out of the dark focus he has had since Ruri came into the room.

“So you  _ are _ the lost princess,” he says, in a tone that would be deceptively light if he weren’t making so little effort to hide the taut undercurrent of suspicion beneath it. “I thought so when I saw you in the shop.”

Ruri faces Izaya without so much as blinking. If Izaya is all deceptive smiles Ruri is a perfect mask, carved into unflinching, unshifting beauty that allows no room for the least flicker of personal emotion to come through as she gazes right back into Izaya’s shadowed stare. “How did you know?”

Izaya lifts a hand from the table to wave generally through the air. “Intuition,” he says. “Don’t worry. I have the advantage of having lived with my cousin the whole of my life. Someone would have to be intimately familiar with Her Majesty to see the resemblance.”

“Are you certain?” Ruri says. There is still no shift in her expression, no change in her tone, but the flat absence of emotion makes the force of the words land with greater sincerity and intent than they might otherwise. “I have spent the last decade staying below the attention of my family. I have no desire to find myself and those I care about drawn back into royal intrigues of the kind I left behind me with the palace.”

“Are you completely certain about that?” Izaya says smoothly. “You  _ are _ a princess, after all. You have as much claim to the throne as I do, should an...opportunity arise.”

Ruri shakes her head with certain force. “I am not part of the royal lineage any longer,” she says firmly. “I am just another member of the village, and that’s where I want to stay.”

Izaya hums in the back of his throat, still leaning in over the table to gaze at Ruri. “And what about you?” He asks the question first and lifts his attention second, so for a moment Shizuo doesn’t know who it is directed to. It’s only as Izaya raises his head to fix Kasuka with the intensity of his focus that Shizuo makes the connection and glances at his brother standing silent and stoic alongside him. “Your wife might not be interested in claiming her right to rule but perhaps you  _ are_. You could be king. Your children could claim control over the whole of this village and the rest of the country as well.”

Kasuka doesn’t even hesitate in shaking his head. “Ruri doesn’t want to go back to the castle,” he says. “I’ll stay with her here in the village instead.”

Izaya watches his face for a moment. Shizuo keeps his attention on Izaya, frowning as he watches calculation play behind the dark of the other’s eyes. He doesn’t know what conclusion Izaya is going to come to, and has less idea what danger might follow from his decision; but the fact that there  _ is _ danger is unmistakable, when Shizuo can feel it thrumming in the air between Izaya on one side and Kasuka and Ruri on the other. Izaya’s forehead creases, the dark of his brows draws together as he frowns at Kasuka; and then his expression relaxes, and he falls back into the chair behind him with a huff.

“There’s really not a scrap of ambition among the lot of you, is there?” he says. “Well. That’s a relief. I’d hate to have to watch out for a mutiny from my supporters in the middle of our rebellion.”

“It’s not ours,” Kasuka puts in, with the same flat tone with which he delivers any statement of blunt fact. “We don’t have any more reason to work with you than we do to support the Queen.”

“Don’t you?” Izaya responds, as quickly as if he were just waiting for Kasuka to refute him. “I’d think you have far better reason to support me than your doting brother there does, and he’s entirely committed to my cause.”

Shizuo growls. “Don’t make it sound like I  _ support _ you,” he says. “I didn’t choose to get involved in any of this, either with you or your crazy cousin.”

“But she  _ is _ crazy,” Izaya says. “That’s why she tried to have me murdered, and with so little grace. She could have poisoned me and been done with it. Funny thing, that she brought you in, don’t you think?”

Shizuo rolls his eyes. “I don’t think--” he says.

“That’s obvious,” Izaya cuts in, before Shizuo can continue his statement.

“Why  _ did _ she call Shizuo in?” Shinra asks. He’s been sitting on the bed in the corner of the room as a means of working around the lack of seating for the excess of people crammed into the cabin. Over the last several minutes Shinra has been dedicating himself to pressing so close to Celty at his side that he’s all but in her lap. Shizuo hadn’t known he was listening to the conversation the other four are having at all, but Shinra’s eyes are bright and his head is cocked on open curiosity as he blinks at the rest of them. “It’s not as if she really needed any outside help. Surely bringing in someone else would just make it more likely that the truth would come out later.”

“It does,” Izaya says. “She should have handled it herself and quietly done away with me. But Shijima’s too devoted to her, everyone knows that he doesn’t so much as take a step that she doesn’t order him to. Him taking me out would be as good as if she were holding the knife herself, and she can’t hide a missing prince forever. Eventually someone would start to wonder what had happened, and who had done it.”

“But that would be obvious,” Shinra says. “You said you left the palace with Shizuo your last morning there, right? People would have noticed a common huntsman in the castle, no matter how careful she was to keep him hidden. It’d be like bringing a bear to court.”

“Thanks,” Shizuo says drily.

Shinra waves his hand. “I do mean it as a compliment!” he exclaims. “Everyone who spends much time in the palace is deep in schemes and plots for power. It’s why my dear Celty prefers to spend our time alone at our estate, where we have plenty of opportunity to bask in the joy of each other’s company!” Celty flushes red and smacks against Shinra’s arm in protest of this, but Shinra just rubs at the point of impact and laughs past it. “Anything you do at court can be twisted into treason if you’re not careful. Shizuo wouldn’t last five minutes before-- _oh_.”

Izaya smirks at him. “There you go.”

“What?” Shizuo asks. Shinra and Izaya both lift their heads to look at him, but neither speaks, even as Shizuo scowls and turns from one to the other. “What are you talking about? Why does this matter?”

“It was going to be you.”

The answer doesn’t come from Shinra’s wide-eyed realization, or Izaya’s knowing smirk, but from Shizuo’s side, where Kasuka is standing. Shizuo blinks and turns to look; Kasuka tips his head to meet his gaze with the same level calm he carries everywhere he goes.

“When the questions began,” Kasuka explains. “The rumors have started already that the prince is dead. Once people become sure enough, they’ll start looking for someone to blame.” He lifts his shoulders into a shrug. “The half-wild huntsman at the fringes of the village is as good a scapegoat as anyone. She removes a political threat and a physical one at one and the same time.”

Shizuo rocks back from the weight of Kasuka’s words. “What?” he says again, though there’s far less force behind them this time, before he shakes his head to throw off the precision of Kasuka’s speech. “I’m not a  _ threat_.”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t look like one,” Kasuka says. “How well do you think the chains on the drawbridges would hold up to you, if you wanted to get into the castle?” He considers Shizuo levelly. “She’s paranoid enough to have the next in line for the throat dispatched. If she can do away with the next greatest threat as well, all the better for her.”

“The threats she knows of,” Izaya says. He’s watching Shizuo when Shizuo looks back to him; his mouth is still turned up at the corner, edging towards no more than the hint of a smile, but his eyes are brilliant and sparkling even from across the distance of the cabin. Shizuo’s skin prickles with self-consciousness, as if Izaya had reached out to draw the tip of an elegant finger down the back of his neck, and Izaya’s lips curve wider as if he can see proof of the other’s reaction. “It’s a good thing for our village tailor that Her Majesty is less well-informed on that front than she believes herself to be.”

Shizuo stiffens and takes a step forward. “If you’re threatening to tell her…”

Izaya lifts his hands from the table. “I’m not threatening anything,” he says. “Really, Shizu-chan, you’re as paranoid as my loving cousin.” He flashes his teeth in a brief, brittle smile that doesn’t touch the focus of his gaze fixed on Shizuo’s face. “I’m just stating the facts.”

“It’s a danger.” That’s from Kasuka, still standing next to Shizuo. He hasn’t moved forward from his original position any more than his voice or expression have flickered with a temper to answer the flare of Shizuo’s. “So long as Queen Saika is on the throne, Ruri is at risk.”

“It’s worth it,” Ruri puts in. “That’s the chance I took when I stayed in the kingdom. I’ve lived with it this long.”

“True,” Izaya says. “And now you have a chance to be free of it.” He leans in over the table again, his attention fixed full on Ruri across from him with no sign of noticing the scowl Shizuo is holding against him. “Help me take back my rightful place and you can right a wrong, and protect your brother-in-law, and gain a life free of constant danger.” He curves his mouth on a smile. “Don’t you want to know what  _ real _ freedom feels like?”

There is a long moment of silence. Shinra has both hands clasped around one of Celty’s and is watching the scene at the table with all the interest of an audience member at a play. Kasuka is quiet next to Shizuo, who is frowning distrust at Izaya but is hardly going to step in to take Ruri’s answer from her. He can’t see the look on Ruri’s face from where he’s standing, only the line of her shoulders; but even then, he can see the way they tilt into ease, as some tension that he hadn’t even known was there gives way for the first time in all the years he’s known her. Ruri lifts her chin and tosses her hair back from her face. “What do you want from us?”

Izaya’s grin is brilliant, blinding as it sparkles color into his eyes as he angles himself over the table into the slant of flirtatious conspiracy. “How do you feel about putting together a wardrobe fit for a prince?”


	14. Teased

The cabin seems strangely quiet with the falling of night.

Shizuo hadn’t thought it was possible for him to be bothered by silence. He craves peace, has always loved the calm that he can find in solitude and contented isolation; if pressed, he would put the kind of hectic scheming that has filled his life since Izaya came into it at the top of the list of things he hates doing. But after several hours of planning an impromptu revolution the departure of the other four visitors has left Shizuo oddly off-balance, as if his own home has been made into something new and strange by the removal of his unwanted guests.

He hasn’t removed all of them, of course. Kasuka and Ruri had left without offering any kind of an invitation to Izaya to accompany them, which Shizuo considers to be the only sane choice, but Shinra had suggested putting the other up in his manor for the night, supported by Celty, whose discomfort with the planned rebellion is apparently insufficient to override her constant desire to help those around her. Shizuo wasn’t surprised by Izaya’s flat refusal, and didn’t bother to pay attention to the excuse he concocted; what has surprised him is how quiet Izaya has gone with the departure of the other guests. It is as if he spent all his conversation with the visitors, and now finds himself drained of energy to do anything but gaze quiet consideration at the far side of the cabin while Shizuo produces something to serve as a meal for the two of them.

It makes Shizuo uncomfortable. He is hardly accustomed to Izaya’s presence; getting used to him would be like growing comfortable with a knife held to his throat, or to staring into the glinting reflection of sunlight slicing up to blind his sight with too much illumination. But it’s worse to have him so quiet, as if his silence is drawing attention to all the times Shizuo finds himself glancing back at the other with no reason other than the shivering awareness of Izaya’s presence in the same space as him, as if he can feel the radiance of the other’s existence on his skin like sunlight.

Even more galling, in its own way, is how utterly inattentive Izaya seems to have become to Shizuo’s own presence near him. The first day they spent together he seemed desperate to hold the full of Shizuo’s attention at every moment, to wrench Shizuo’s focus back onto him every time it showed the least suggestion of wandering. But following the conversation with Shinra and Ruri and Celty and Kasuka Izaya seems to retreat entirely into his own thoughts, until Shizuo doubts if the other is aware of the presence of another human being in the cabin with him at all. It ought to be a comfort, Shizuo thinks, to find himself so suddenly freed of the irritation that has ground at him every moment he has spent in Izaya’s company, but of course he just finds himself more unsettled, as if his attention is contrarily rushing in to fill the gap left by Izaya ceasing to demand it. Shizuo frowns at Izaya through the whole of their nearly-silent meal, watching the firelight sink itself into the dark of the other’s hair and flicker the possibility of clarity to whatever thoughts are working behind his crimson-kissed eyes; and maybe it’s that, in the end, the rising desire to find some kind of resistance to lean into, that pulls the words from his lips as he pushes back from the table to cast his shadow over Izaya.

“You can take the bed tonight.” Izaya’s lashes dip into a blink, his chin lifts to turn his attention up to Shizuo; there is shock in his expression, enough to be gratifying if Shizuo weren’t uncomfortably certain that Izaya had entirely forgotten he was even in the room with him. Shizuo’s frown deepens and he turns his head to look aside. “I can last a night on the floor.”

Izaya stares at him. He looks as shocked as if Shizuo had just declared he intends to overthrow the rebellion and lead the coup for the throne himself. He blinks, and then knits his dark brows together as he cocks his head to the side. “It’s your home.”

Shizuo waves a hand. “You’re royalty,” he says roughly. “I’m supposed to be trying to put you on the throne. And it’s only for tonight, anyway. Tomorrow you’ll be sleeping in the palace or in a cell, one way or another.”

Izaya lifts his eyebrows and huffs a laugh. “Or eternally,” he says, in a tone as light as the motion with which he rises to his feet. “You’re certainly  _ not _ sleeping on the floor, Shizu-chan. Of us all you most need to be well-rested for tomorrow’s festivities and I know from personal experience your hearthstone doesn’t make for a particularly luxurious mattress.” He tosses his hair back from his face and fixes Shizuo with the dark focus of his gaze. “You’ll be sleeping in your own bed.”

Shizuo scoffs a humorless laugh. “You need as much rest as I do,” he points out. “You’re supposed to be at your most charismatic and brilliant tomorrow, you can’t do that with no sleep.”

“Of course I can’t,” Izaya agrees, so quickly that Shizuo has the sinking feeling he has just stepped into a trap. Then Izaya continues, and he’s sure of it. “Which is why I’ll be sharing the bed with you.”

Shizuo’s eyebrows jump. “Sorry?”

“We’ll share the bed,” Izaya says smoothly. “Even with us both in it, it’ll be more comfortable than the floor.” He lifts a hand to cover his mouth as he makes some show of yawning delicately behind it. “And I’m worn out from the trials and tribulations of the day. I could sleep just about anywhere.”

“Then you  _ should _ take the floor after all,” Shizuo tells him. “I’m not--I can’t share a  _ bed _ with you.”

“Why not?” Izaya asks. There’s a smile touching at the curve of his mouth; with the shadow of Shizuo’s shoulders cast over his face, Shizuo can’t tell if the amusement of his expression has touched his eyes to illumination or if it remains trapped in the possibilities framed by his lips. The uncertainty runs a shiver down his spine, as if he’s striding out onto ice and waiting for the sound of a  _ crack _ underfoot to announce of danger too late to avoid it. “The impropriety?” His head cants to the side, his smile spills a little wider. “What sort of indecencies would your animal instincts wreck upon me, I wonder?”

Shizuo growls. “There’s not enough  _ space_,” he insists, rather than pausing to respond to the suggestion melting heat over Izaya’s words.

Izaya rolls his eyes. “There’s plenty of space,” he says, and turns to pad across the floor towards the bed waiting in the corner. When he speaks it’s over his shoulder, with his head turned so Shizuo can just see the elegant lines of his profile in the illumination of the cabin. “Unless you’re too afraid of what I might do to you.”

That gets a snort of disbelieving laughter. “I’m not scared of you.”

“Good,” Izaya says, too quickly, and turns on his heel to beam at Shizuo. “It’s settled, then.”

He’s right. Shizuo continues to offer protest as he stirs the fire to greater heights against the chill of the night and strips off the weight of the coarse shirt he has worn through the day, but he doesn’t need to look at Izaya tucking himself into the blankets on the bed to know that he’s lost. There’s still the option to sleep on the floor himself, one he seriously considers while he’s gazing at the flickering orange of the fire as a means of putting off his necessary retreat to sleep; but then Izaya calls from across the room, “Come to  _ bed_, Shizu-chan,” with such mockery on his tone that Shizuo is growling and surging to his feet to respond before he can think the better of it. Izaya is smirking at him from the bed, where he’s settled himself into comfort with the obvious expectation of Shizuo’s refusal to join him, so of course Shizuo stomps across the floor to drag back the blankets. Izaya flinches from the cold, hissing protest past his teeth as he draws back towards the wall, and Shizuo casts himself onto the mattress at once. His temper urges him forward as he kicks his feet under the blankets, and arranges himself over the pillow beneath his head, and lets one arm fall to hold the quilt in place over him; and then Izaya breathes out alongside him, and slides close to fit himself to Shizuo’s side, and Shizuo’s irritation melts in the face of the creeping heat that rises to flush his cheeks and tighten his breathing.

“Get off me,” he says, turning his head fractionally to the side so he can aim his scowl in Izaya’s direction without actually turning enough to confront how close the other’s crimson lips are to his own.

“It’s cold,” Izaya whines, and presses himself closer against Shizuo’s arm. His hand falls over Shizuo’s shoulder, his fingers brushing idle friction over the other’s bare skin. Shizuo can feel the ripple of the contact run straight down his spine to ground itself out at his groin. He clenches his jaw tight and stares straight up at the ceiling, feeling his heart pounding in his chest as he exerts every ounce of will he possesses to hold back the flushing warmth Izaya’s teasing is stirring in his body.

The effort occupies his attention for some time. Izaya is close against him, tipping in so the thin fabric of his shirt is trapped between his chest and Shizuo’s arm; Shizuo supposes he ought to be grateful that Izaya is wearing as much as he is, under the circumstances, but the casual weight of the fingers at his shoulder and the heat of Izaya’s breathing ruffling his hair at the pillow is more than enough to offer real threat to his composure. If Izaya moved at all, if he drew breath to murmur against Shizuo’s ear or slid his knee up to press his thigh higher against Shizuo’s; but he doesn’t, doesn’t shift and doesn’t speak, until after a time the danger of arousal begins to retreat, and Shizuo finds himself relaxing into something like comfort in spite of the unbelievable circumstances. His body eases, the tension knotting in his muscles soothed by his stillness and his own insistent attention towards relaxation, until even the presence of another person in bed with him isn’t enough to interrupt the slow drift of his thoughts towards sleep.

He doesn’t realize Izaya is still awake. There has been no sign of consciousness from the other, no catch of a breath or so much as a quiver in the fingers resting against Shizuo’s shoulder. Shizuo had assumed that Izaya collapsed into sleep almost at once, urged there by the exhaustion he claimed, and so when Izaya draws a sharp breath it is almost as startling in itself as the clear sound of his voice breaking into the quiet of the night around them. “Are you afraid?”

Shizuo blinks. “Izaya?” He angles his head in Izaya’s direction, so he’s seeing the wall next to them instead of the ceiling overhead. “I thought you were asleep.” Izaya doesn’t speak or move to respond to this and Shizuo returns to the actual meaning of the question instead of the surprise hearing it brought. “About tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

Shizuo considers the question. “A little,” he admits. “I’m worried about Kasuka. He never asked to get pulled into all of this and I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep him safe. And Shinra, a little, he’s always finding some kind of trouble to get himself into.” Shizuo shrugs. “He’s always been able to take care of himself, though. He can sort it out if things go bad.”

“Not for yourself?” Izaya’s voice lacks the edge Shizuo has grown accustomed to over the last days in the other’s company; he sounds so distant that Shizuo wonders if he isn’t asleep after all and speaking from the daze of some restless dream. “You’ll be in the middle of the danger, after all.”

Shizuo shakes his head. “Not really,” he says. “I’ll make it through or I won’t. Worrying about it won’t help anything.”

Izaya huffs an exhale. Shizuo can feel it warm against the side of his neck. “How very logical of you.”

Shizuo pauses, wondering if he should speak, if he wouldn’t be better off letting Izaya’s response stand as conclusion for the soft murmur of this conversation; but curiosity gets the better of him, and when he takes a breath it’s to speak instead of to sigh himself into rest. “What about you?”

Izaya hums. “What about me, Shizu-chan?”

Shizuo turns his head to look fully at Izaya next to him. Izaya’s eyes are open, his head tipped up to fix his gaze on Shizuo. There’s no tension at his mouth, for once; he looks peaceful as Shizuo has never seen him before, as if he really is as relaxed as the weight of his body pressing to Shizuo’s would indicate. Shizuo looks at him for a minute before he blinks and speaks, soft in consideration of some spell he can’t identify but feels the effect of all the same. “Are you scared?”

Izaya’s lashes drag through the slow flutter of a blink. He tips his head in against the mattress to indicate negation. “No.”

Shizuo is almost whispering, now. He doesn’t know why but he doesn’t raise his voice to a more clear range either. “Why not?”

Izaya’s shoulder shifts into a shrug. “I was expecting you to kill me in the middle of that forest,” he says, as easily as if he’s speaking of the sun rising, or what he intends to have for breakfast. “I’m already living on borrowed time.”

Shizuo’s skin prickles with goosebumps. “You sound like you’re just waiting to die.”

“Worried I’m leading you all into a deathtrap?” Izaya wants to know. He tips himself back on the mattress to lie against his back instead of on his side pressing against Shizuo’s arm. His fingers trail down Shizuo’s shoulder and across the other’s chest, drawing idle patterns across bare skin as his gaze drifts to follow the motion instead of holding to Shizuo’s attention on him. “I’m not intending to lose tomorrow. Everything I do I’m doing to survive.”

Shizuo frowns at him. “But you don’t think you will.”

“I don’t think we’ll lose,” Izaya says calmly. “It’s a good plan.”

“Because it’s yours?”

Izaya’s mouth curves onto a smile as he glances up at Shizuo. “Yes,” he says. “I’m good at scheming.” He shrugs again. “Better than my cousin, anyway. You don’t need to worry, Shizu-chan.” He slides his hand up Shizuo’s chest to press his fingers against the other’s jaw and cradle Shizuo’s head against his palm as he tips his head to smile at him. “I don’t think she  _ could _ kill you if she tried.”

Shizuo grimaces and shakes his head to throw off Izaya’s touch. “And you don’t think I can keep you alive?”

“You’re welcome to try,” Izaya says. “Whatever happens, tomorrow will end with me either dead or a king.” He tosses his head to sweep his hair back from his face and leans back, tilting his shoulders away from Shizuo as his knee inches up to threaten the weight of Shizuo’s thigh. The motion calls flickering firelight to illuminate his face, bringing out the flames of color from behind his lashes as his silky shirt pools emphasis at his narrow waist and around the angle of his wrist. Shizuo’s attention flickers downward, pulled before he can muster any efforts to the contrary, and Izaya curves his mouth onto a sultry smile.

“And either way,” he purrs. “You’ll regret giving up this opportunity.” He lifts his hand to reach across Shizuo’s chest and brush his fingers to the other’s waist as he turns back in to capture the heat of the firelight in the shadows between their bodies. “I’m sure my royal self can offer you  _ far _ more satisfaction than any of the assuredly plentiful partners you find for yourself out here.”

Shizuo groans and lifts a hand to shove Izaya back against the wall hard enough that he slams into the resistance. “ _Goodnight_ ,” he growls, and twists to turn aside and face the rest of the room instead of the mocking seduction Izaya is offering behind him. There’s the sound of a laugh, and the shift of a mattress, but when Izaya leans back in against him it’s just to press himself against Shizuo’s back, without any return of the wandering fingers Shizuo is most concerned about fending off. Shizuo waits with the tension of a frown at his lips, ready to relegate Izaya back to the floor by force if need be; but Izaya falls silent for good, this time, and while Shizuo is waiting to see if he really is asleep he falls into dreams of his own before he realizes it.


	15. Offered

By the time Shizuo has caught up to what’s happening, he’s sitting in the shadows of Shinra’s carriage with Izaya on the seat facing him.

He had no time to collect himself upon waking. The morning began with the thunder of knocking against his front door, followed very shortly by Shinra calling for  _ “The leaders of the rebellion!” _ with as much cheer as if he were making an announcement at a wedding. Shizuo had been jolted so immediately and shockingly to consciousness that he was tumbling out of bed before he processed the way he and Izaya had tangled themselves together over the course of the night, and by the time he was turning back to stare shock Izaya had turned away to face the wall in an attempt at further rest that Shizuo knows will prove entirely futile. Better to embrace the morning, early though it may be, and to go and let Shinra gain entrance to the cabin before he beats a hole right through the door; and then Shinra was inside, with Celty playing his regular shadow, and things were underway before Shizuo had even put a shirt on. Shinra kept up a running conversation as Shizuo struggled himself into a sort of bleary awareness, rambling incessant conversation until Izaya finally groaned and sat up in bed, and no sooner was the head of their intended coup awake than another, more restrained knock announced Ruri and Kasuka’s arrival. Ruri retreated to the corner of the cabin with an armful of fabric and a still-yawning Izaya, leaving Shizuo to handle the excess of conversation from Shinra and the total absence of such from Kasuka until such time as Izaya descended in state to declare himself ready to lead a rebellion.

He  _ does _ look elegant. Shizuo didn’t get a good look at him until they were in the carriage together, with Shinra shutting the door to hide them away from curious eyes until the proper moment for Izaya’s grand reveal, but even in the shadows cast by the curtains drawn over the windows Izaya seems to shine. He’s in a dark brocade coat, cut to fall halfway down his thighs and boasting glittering golden embroidery around the cuffs and collar; it’s buttoned all the way up his chest, so Shizuo can see how closely the seams hug his narrow hips and narrower waist, and where it falls open there’s the tumble of lace around his neck to spill past the collar. His boots are those he wore on their departure from the palace, though polished to a shine that denies any prior use whatsoever, but Ruri has provided him with new pants as well, crafted from some fabric that clings to his calves in a way that makes Shizuo sincerely doubt the protection they will offer from any kind of an attack. His face is just as it always is, now lit by a stripe of illumination as he lifts a hand to pull back the weight of a curtain by an inch, but with the deliberate elegance of his clothes to set off his looks Shizuo thinks his beauty looks as much a construct as the rest of him, until he finds himself doubting the color of the other’s lips and the dark of his lashes even with plentiful evidence of their natural origins. It feels like he’s staring at a picture, like Izaya has retreated behind a portrait frame as ornate as the embroidery on his coat, and Shizuo can feel his jaw flexing on an irritation that swells in him without any conscious thought as to its source.

“Cut it out,” he snaps as a means of easing some part of his building discomfort, and he leans forward to smack Izaya’s outstretched fingers away from the curtain. “You’re going to ruin your big reveal if someone sees you.”

Izaya rolls his eyes. “No one’s going to see me, Shizu-chan,” he says. “There’s no one out at this hour of the morning anyway, and it’s impossible to see anything inside a moving carriage.” He lets his hand fall all the same as he turns away from the window to face Shizuo instead. “You’re jumpier than I expected you to be. I thought you didn’t care how this turned out.”

“The grand entrance was  _ your _ idea,” Shizuo reminds him. “I don’t want you to go changing plans on us at the last minute.”

“Nothing’s going to go according to plan,” Izaya drawls. “It never does. You might as well take these last few minutes to resign yourself to that, we won’t have time once things get started.”

“I know that,” Shizuo growls back. “That doesn’t mean you have to go  _ looking _ for trouble.”

Izaya flickers a smile and cocks his head to the side. “Maybe  _ you _ don’t,” he purrs. “I’m  _ always _ looking for trouble.” Shizuo huffs a breath of acknowledgment by way of answer. Izaya’s smile pulls a little wider before he turns his head to catch another flicker of the sunlight outside over his features as the curtain shifts with the rattle of the carriage under them.

Shizuo stares at him. Izaya’s clothes are beautiful, cut to fit him with a precision that speaks as much to Ruri’s skill as the quality of the fabric speaks to the value of the garments, but his attention refuses to linger on the laces of Izaya’s dark boots or the exquisite detailing of his coat or even the tumble of lace spilling from his collar. It keeps drifting to land at the tumble of Izaya’s hair, dark as ink against his forehead and brushing the back of his neck, or seeking out the curve of the not-quite smile he’s held against his lips since the carriage rattled into motion. There is something dark behind Izaya’s eyes, a shadow that Shizuo can’t put a name to even now, and it’s that that he’s gazing at when Izaya glances sideways and his lips tilt on a smirk as he catches Shizuo staring.

“Admiring the view?” he asks, and gives up his attention to the window to lounge back against the carriage seat. It’s an elegant carriage, well-padded in a way that Shizuo knows is expensive and still doesn’t do a great deal to soften the rattle of the means of transportation itself, but Izaya shows no sign of so much as noticing the shaking around them as he lifts his arm to drape over the back of the seat and angles one knee out from the support. The motion pulls at the hem of his coat and suggests a path for Shizuo’s gaze to make up the inside line of his thigh, which Shizuo begins before hastily averting into a glare instead.

“Yeah,” he says, with as much scorn as he can put onto the word of agreement. “You look like a doll.”

“All ready to be set on a throne,” Izaya says with no sign of temper at Shizuo’s dismissive tone. “Appearances matter in this sort of thing, Shizu-chan. You’ll never rule a county with an attitude like that.”

Shizuo snorts. “Thank goodness,” he says. “I sure don’t want to.”

“You’ll leave it all to me instead?”

Shizuo shrugs. “Better than your cousin,” he allows. “A little.”

Izaya’s teeth flash white on a smile. “Your support is overpowering.” He tips his head to catch another glance at their surroundings through the window. “We’re almost there.”

It’s a simple statement. Shizuo knew they must be about to arrive; his cabin isn’t terribly far from the main village, well within walking distance if Izaya hadn’t decreed with the full force of his royal birthright that he needed to make a more dramatic entrance. Even so, he feels his sense of the world beneath his feet tilt sharply sideways, as if the force that has always kept him firmly attached to the ground is considering abandoning his feet while pulling suddenly harder against his heart in his chest. Shizuo hisses a breath, feeling shock run cold through his veins; and then the carriage rattles to a halt, and there is a voice outside,  _ “We’re here!” _ clear and carrying in Shinra’s bright tone.

“So we are,” Izaya says, and straightens to sit up at his seat across from Shizuo. His gaze finds Shizuo’s and holds it without any flicker of the smile that he so frequently has tucked against the curve of his lips. Shizuo’s body tightens, flexing as if to brace for a blow; but there is no attack he can repulse, no danger to be confronted, just Izaya staring at him from across the distance of a curtain-shadowed carriage. Shizuo can see Izaya’s throat work as he swallows, can hear the soft of his words as he all but whispers them. “Are you ready?”

Shizuo blinks. “Doesn’t matter,” he rasps. “Does it?”

Izaya’s expression cracks onto a sudden, startled smile. “No,” he says. “It doesn’t.” The carriage shakes, jolting with the force of Shinra jumping down from the front seat where he’s been driving. Shizuo glances towards the door, anticipating Shinra’s motion to throw it open, and Izaya catches a breath that goes loud with force.

“Kiss me.”

Shizuo jerks back to stare at him. Izaya is sitting upright in the seat across from him, the languid slouch of his body entirely given over for the same tight-wound expectation that has darkened his gaze to black and set his lips tight together. His cheeks are flushed pink with heat; he looks almost feverish with anticipation, as if he can’t quite catch his breath from the strain of the moment. He looks panicked, he looks breathless, looks like he is trembling at the cusp of some impossible relief. He looks irresistible.

Shizuo doesn’t think about resisting. He doesn’t think about anything at all, actually, for the force of the shock that has stripped the strength from his body and rendered him wide-eyed and blank with surprise on his side of the carriage. He blinks, swallows, struggles. “What?”

“Kiss me,” Izaya says, and leans forward from his seat. His hand comes out to feather through Shizuo’s hair falling around his ear; when his palm fits to the side of Shizuo’s neck the fever-heat of it spreads out into Shizuo’s chest, radiating into a flush at his face and a speeding of his pulse with no more action than Izaya’s hand touching his bare skin. “For luck, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo doesn’t know what to say. His voice is gone, melted away by the weight of Izaya’s touch against him; his strength is lost to the sudden, unlooked-for invitation of Izaya’s words. Izaya is leaning in from his side of the carriage, so far forward on his seat he is in some danger of casting himself outright into Shizuo’s lap; his mouth is soft, his lashes heavy, his cheeks flushed with the same heat glowing at his fingertips. He is royalty, powerful and manipulative and radiant with a beauty dangerous as a knife at a throat, and Shizuo can feel the craving for him coursing through his whole body with an inebriation well past the point of madness. Izaya’s gaze shifts, trailing over Shizuo’s face to linger heavy with suggestion against his mouth; and then the latch of the door  _ click_s, and Izaya blinks and starts to straighten as the door comes open.

“Here we go!” Shinra exclaims from the other side of the door, beaming and effusive and utterly oblivious to the tension straining the air within the carriage. “Ready for your coup?”

Izaya’s lips press together, closing over the possibility they offered for a moment too brief and breathless for Shizuo to react before the corner of his mouth angles steeply up into amusement. “Too bad,” he says, and draws his hand along the back of Shizuo’s neck to follow the line of his jaw. “You missed your chance, Shizu-chan.” His fingers slide over Shizuo’s skin, drawing the contact out for a moment; and then Izaya turns his head, and his hand falls away, and he’s rising to his feet to step out of the carriage and onto the hard-packed dirt that forms the path through the village. Shinra ducks himself into an elaborate bow, with flourishes enough to draw dozens of nonexistent eyes, before he turns out to the silence of the waiting village.

“We come with glad tidings!” he proclaims, speaking loud as he steps forward with arms upraised to announce Izaya’s presence. “The heir to the throne, Prince Izaya, has returned from the dead to claim his rightful place once again!”

A shadow steps around the open door of the carriage: Celty, draped in a heavy gown and with her eyes open wide with the general concern that she has shown for this plan from the beginning. “Shizuo,” she says, and lifts a hand to offer support for Shizuo to descend from the carriage. “Are you alright?”

Shizuo swallows in an effort to smooth some of the roughness from his throat. “Yeah,” he says, knowing it for a lie even as he says it, and he reaches to take Celty’s gloved hand so he can climb out of the carriage with significantly less grace than Izaya did. It doesn’t matter; there is no one watching him, not even Izaya. Shizuo stares after the other two, feeling his chest ache with something he can’t fit a name to, before he shakes his head and lets Celty’s hand go. “I’m fine.” And he strides forward to fall into place in Izaya and Shinra’s wake.


	16. Advanced

The approach goes more smoothly than Shizuo could have dreamed.

He had been afraid of meeting with no response at all. His visits to the village, rare though they have been, are for the most part marked more by quiet and calm than by any kind of drama. Based on his personal experience, it seems more reasonable to expect that a village that quietly embraced the runaway princess without so much as a sideways glance will remain stubbornly in their homes, however melodramatic Izaya makes his entrance. But Shinra’s voice seems to summon doors to open and faces to appear to stare at the four of them making their way down the main path through town. Shizuo can feel his shoulders hunch in self-defense, can feel his face hardening onto a scowl in spite of all Izaya’s instructions about looking approachable and friendly, but where Shizuo frowns Izaya smiles and steps forward without any sign of fear. He’s ready with outstretched hands, and an expression so beaming with warmth Shizuo would never believe it to be insincere if he didn’t have plentiful evidence of such, and while Shizuo is caught somewhere between surprise and displeasure at the patent lie Izaya is crafting the village emerges around them. By the time they are halfway to the main square they are drawing a crowd ahead as well as behind, as farmers and artisans alike tumble out of their houses first to stare, and then to smile, and then to be caught up in the undeniable pull of Izaya’s procession through the village.

They have the greater part of the town at their backs by the time they reach the farthest end of the main road where Kasuka and Ruri are waiting at Kasuka’s shop. There isn’t any real sign of violence in their gathering as yet, at least not that Shizuo can tell, but his skin is still shivering with a premonition of the danger into which they will be walking, and from which not all the population of the village will protect them. The castle is looming on the horizon, vast and grey and heavy against the clear of the sky, and Shizuo finds his attention held as much by the threat awaiting them as by all the radiant polish in which Izaya has wrapped himself.

Kasuka looks out past Izaya, at the front of the crowd and Shizuo and Shinra trailing behind him. He ducks his head to nod at the crush of people waiting on a word to turn themselves into the seething, furious force of a mob. Shizuo has entirely given up on his attempt to look calm or to keep his shoulders from the wall of force they are making as much to defend him from the impact of the horde at his back as from the undeclared dangers awaiting them before, but Kasuka appears as unruffled as ever, as if this is just another part of the perfectly ordinary life he has made for himself. “It worked.”

Izaya lifts his chin to peal a laugh into the cool of the morning air. “Of course it worked,” he says, with a flippant self-assurance on his voice that makes Shizuo scowl and stirs a murmur of excitement through their followers. “I’m simply declaring my rightful claim to the throne. There’s nothing underhanded about any of this, you know.” He tips his head to look over Kasuka’s shoulder, where Ruri is standing in the open doorway of the shop with a hand on the frame and her gaze cast up the hill towards the castle. “Will you and your lady wife be joining in our push for freedom from the queen’s oppression?”

Ruri looks back to Izaya. She’s half-hidden in the shadows, with the overhang of the shop disguising the beauty of her features with darkness, but she still draws the eye. Shizuo is surprised, now, that he didn’t see the resemblance in the first moment he met Izaya, in the ethereal, inhuman quality of their beauty as much as any specific detail. Then he looks back to Izaya, standing slightly apart from the crowd with his chin lifted to the light and his smile flashing brilliant in the sun, and he remembers why it was that he thought of nothing and no one at all except the man before him in the first shock of meeting.

“No,” Kasuka says evenly, and Shizuo blinks and looks away from Izaya as he tries to collect himself back to recall the subject of their conversation. “We’re happy to support you in your preparation but we’ll be staying here. Neither of us have anything we need from the castle or those within it.”

Izaya softens his lower lip into a pout. “And you don’t wish to aid us in our quest? Every pair of hands gets us a little closer to our goal.”

Kasuka ducks his head towards Shizuo. For a moment their eyes meet and hold for a breath of acknowledgment before Kasuka looks back to Izaya. “I don’t think you need any more than Shizuo’s to get you where you need to be.”

“Mm,” Izaya hums around the curve of a smile spreading over his face. He glances back at Shizuo, the scarlet hue of his gaze deepened to shadow by the dark of his lashes cast heavy over his eyes. “I suppose you’re right about that.” And he turns away, dismissing Kasuka as clearly as if he had declared it aloud as he lifts a hand to gesture the rest forward. “Onward!”

It is strange to be part of such a crowd as this, Shizuo considers as they ascend the hill towards the castle. He has spent the greater part of his life removing himself from the village, establishing himself at the fringes without asking for the impossibility of acceptance from those living within it. Now he finds himself all but leading a crowd formed of the greater part of the population itself, as much a part of them as any, perhaps even in a position of some authority thanks to his nearer association with the prince they have all chosen to follow. Shizuo stares at Izaya’s shoulders as they climb towards the castle, wondering at the power in the other’s smile and the persuasion in the lilt of his voice to make a following out of individuals, to create an army for himself with no more than pretty clothes and a thin pretense. Perhaps there is something of royalty in it, some sense of manipulation that Izaya has gained as his birthright as much as he has secured an inalienable claim to the throne. Izaya tips his head to glance back at Shizuo behind him, as if he can hear the murmur of the other’s thoughts; but he doesn’t speak, just flickers a smile, and when he turns away to continue forward Shizuo finds himself following, bound by the same compulsion that drew him forward across the open courtyard where they first met.

The drawbridge is raised when they arrive at the entrance to the castle. This is hardly a surprise; Shizuo has seen it lowered only once in the half-dozen times he has climbed this near, and that with Shijima at his side to earn him entrance. With the bridge pulled up their group collects at the far side of the moat ringing the castle, pouring forward to accumulate at the far side like water building behind an unexpected dam. Shizuo and Shinra are urged forward along with the rest, Shinra taking advantage of the opportunity to press himself entirely against Celty alongside him and Shizuo closing the gap that Izaya has retained around him through their whole procession, as if his right to the throne is forming a barrier to hold back the common people. There is no real resistance, of course, or if there is Shizuo pushes right past it without noticing to draw immediately alongside Izaya so he can lean in and growl against the curve of the other’s ear. “What  _ now_?”

Izaya doesn’t even turn his head in response. His gaze is lifted towards the height of the castle walls, up towards the gaps that line the top of the barrier ringing the castle. There is still a smile playing at his lips, the shape of it formed around a curve like he’s holding back some secret knowledge.

“Patience, Shizu-chan,” he says without turning his head. He lifts his arm to the side, catching the back of his wrist against Shizuo’s chest, and when he pushes Shizuo finds himself backing away in spite of his intention to hold close against Izaya’s side. Shizuo falls back, rejoining the mass of humanity that has formed a semicircle around Izaya before them, and Izaya calls out to the featureless walls in a voice that rings like a blow echoing off the barrier.

“I am Orihara Izaya, crown prince of the realm,” he shouts, and the world goes silent, the casual conversations and murmured questions of the crowd behind him dropping away into absolute attention. Shizuo’s chest tightens, his breathing catching on sudden tension, but he can’t turn his head to look around, can’t take his eyes away from the figure of Izaya standing tall and beautiful and alone in the middle of the crowd he has gathered for himself as he faces down the wall keeping him from his castle. “In my own name, I demand entrance to this palace and an audience with the queen my cousin who sought my life.”

There is a murmur of shock that ripples through the crowd behind him, a single spreading wave of surprise that rushes and vanishes to return them to utter silence again. Shizuo looks up at the wall overhead, his skin prickling as if with a chill though his body feels radiant with the impulse to fight, to defend, to surge into action of some kind rather than just standing here silent and still and helpless. It is so quiet he imagines he could hear the sound of a bowstring drawing back, could hear the crackle of magic accumulating around unseen hands to lance in for the killing blow; but he hears nothing, and there is no sign of an assault on the prince standing patiently before them all. Shizuo’s heart pounds in his chest, beating so hard and fast he feels it must create an echo of its own to follow the clear calm of Izaya’s declaration; and then there is a  _ creak_, the sound of metal dragging heavy over itself, and Izaya’s head turns to watch as the drawbridge begins to slowly lower towards them.

The crowd draws back instinctively. The bridge is enormous, heavy and dark as it lowers towards them; even with the indentation clearly marked in the ground some feet away, the impulse to flinch back from the lowering weight is too great to be avoided. It is only Izaya who doesn’t move, and Shizuo behind him, so as the bridge crashes into place it lands no more than a pair of handspans from where Izaya set his position at the front of his followers. Shizuo stares at him, feeling impressed in spite of himself at Izaya’s demonstrated self-possession, before the portcullis on the far side of the bridge pulls up to let a rider emerge from the courtyard within.

Shizuo recognizes him at once. It’s partially the horse, the unbroken black of the animal’s coat speaking with such clarity to his memories that he can hardly disregard its call; but more it’s the tilt of the man’s head, the haughty lift of his chin so he’s looking down his nose even more so than he already was from his mounted position. He rides out towards them, approaching with some speed as he does so before he draws up to a skidding halt just in front of Izaya. Izaya doesn’t so much as take a step back or even lift an eyebrow in answer; the only response he allows is in the tilt of his smile, which draws up as Shijima’s horse struggles to a stop against the wooden planks of the bridge before them.

“You,” Shijima sneers. “Her Majesty believed you dead,  _ Prince _ Izaya.”

“I’m sure she did,” Izaya says, answering Shijima’s mocking title with perfect calm. “Seeing as she sent me into the forest unprotected from the temper of a murderous huntsman.” He flashes his teeth into an icy smile. “It is lucky for me that her assassin proved to have a warmer heart than Her Majesty.”

Shijima’s face pales and he bares his teeth. “ _Insolence_ ,” he gasps. “You  _ dare _ besmirch the name of Queen Saika? She will have your  _ head _ for this.”

“She’s welcome to try,” Izaya says. He lifts his hands from his sides and tilts his chin up to demonstrate. “I’ve delivered myself right to her. Surely she would be happy to see the job done herself, now that her huntsman has proven himself unfit for the job.”

Shijima pulls back on the reins of his horse to back it up by a few paces. “Her Majesty has no need to deal with one such as you,” he says. “Her followers--”

“Are no greater in number than my own,” Izaya interrupts. “Does she intend to pit her guards against unarmed villagers?” He lifts an arm to gesture behind him without turning to look. “Women? Children? There are too many for her to murder them all. Some must survive.” Shizuo glances sideways to frown at this uncomforting argument but Izaya is fixed on Shijima and doesn’t meet his gaze. “The story must get out. It has already begun to spread. There are those in the village now who know it, who have the means to spread it throughout the country.” He drops his arm and cocks his head to the side to beam at Shijima as if he’s the bearer of comforting news instead of closing a trap around the other. “All the queen’s loyal men will not be enough, I think, to overcome the power of an entire country mobilized against her.”

Shijima sneers. “Who will they follow?” he says. “A dead prince martyred in front of them will hardly pull people from their homes.” Shizuo growls in the back of his throat and takes a step forward; but Izaya is already moving, shifting himself smoothly to the side so the angle of his shoulders cuts off Shizuo’s approach.

“Perhaps not,” Izaya says, with that same clear, unflinching tone that he has used every time he has spoken of this subject to Shizuo, as if his life is of no more interest to him than a piece on a game board, to be risked and sacrificed as needed in pursuit of his ultimate goal. “But a living princess will do quite well enough.” That brings a gasp from the crowd behind him, and a soft, quickly-muffled exclamation from Shinra. Izaya reacts to neither, just goes on smiling that threat of a smile at Shijima, who has gone so white that his pallor is visible even through the layer of makeup he’s wearing.

“You--” he starts, and stammers to a halt before he can find the voice to go on. “You found the princess.”

“Yes,” Izaya drawls. “Your queen doesn’t seem quite able to actually follow through on those murders she keeps attempting.” He pauses and cocks his head to the side. “Or perhaps it’s the incompetence of her followers that causes the problem. I wonder who it was that was responsible for making sure our beloved princess so tragically vanished?”

Shijima jerks back on the reins of his horse so sharply the animal whinnies protest and stumbles backwards by another few steps. Izaya peals a clear laugh into the open air. “I’d suggest you bear a message back to your queen that the palace is overrun and you should make your escape.” He cocks his head to the side. “Or you can try to run on your own and see if you can make it clear of her influence before the news of the princess’s survival reaches her ears. Of course, it’s always possible that she will choose to be lenient with her most devoted follower. I have always known my cousin to be  _ most _ forgiving to those closest to her.”

Shijima hisses in the back of his throat, giving a protest to the poisonous implication at Izaya’s lips; but he’s turning, too, pulling his horse around to retreat even as he glares at their company. He spurs his horse back across the bridge, lunging for the raised portcullis with all speed, and in his wake Izaya steps out onto the drawbridge, followed by the surge of the villagers behind him. Shizuo is with them, striding forward onto the bridge even as Shijima clears the portcullis and waves a hand that crackles with magic to close it behind him. By the time they make it to the entrance into the castle the metal bars are lowered in place and any trace of Shijima or guards within has utterly vanished.

Izaya strides right up to the portcullis, continuing at speed as if he doesn’t even see the barrier before him. It’s only at the last moment that he comes to a halt, and then with a stutter to his steps to speak to his surprise at the interruption to his forward movement. He pauses just before the gate, and lifts a hand to touch against the metal; and then he turns his head to cast his heavy-lashed gaze over his shoulder at Shizuo.

“Shizu-chan,” he says, his voice so crisp it carries the implication of snapped fingers even without the gesture. “Let me into my palace, if you would.”

Shizuo blinks at Izaya, so startled at being called out from the crowd that he doesn’t realize what Izaya is even asking for at first. Then Izaya lifts an eyebrow, and gestures to the gate in their way, and Shizuo rocks back on his heels with realization. He hesitates, thinking of refusing just on the principle of the thing; but the crowd of the village is pressing in behind him, and he doesn’t particularly care to pick a fight with the whole of the town for the sake of complaining about Izaya’s haughty demeanor. He  _ is _ a prince, after all, and soon to be a king if all goes as planned; and Shizuo has been part of that plan from the beginning, willingly or otherwise. He heaves a sigh of resignation and steps forward to brace a hand against the metal grate.

“I’m going to kill you for this later,” he says, speaking softly so only Izaya will hear him over the protesting screech of the metal wrenching upward for the pull of Shizuo’s hand.

Izaya purrs a laugh at the back of his throat. “So you say,” he says, and lifts a hand to touch his fingers to Shizuo’s cheek. With his own hands occupied with holding up the weight of the portcullis Shizuo lacks the ability to push him away, and when he offers the glare that is the best protest he has Izaya meets him with a spreading smile that glows brilliant behind his eyes. “I’m looking forward to it, Shizu-chan.” And he draws his touch away and turns to lead the rush forward to lay claim to the waiting castle.


	17. Lost

Shijima is the last of the resistance they find on their way into the castle. There are no guards waiting on the far side of the portcullis, no trace of the hard-faced soldiers that have so shadowed Shizuo’s faith in their success. The castle is eerily silent as the crowd of villagers pours through the entrance and into the courtyard, as if the soldiers and servants that filled the rooms with the flickering light of candles on Shizuo’s last visit have evaporated into so much smoke in the air. Izaya pauses in the courtyard as they come forward, halting in the center as he lifts his head to look up and around them, and Shizuo draws up next to him, standing close enough to the other’s shoulder that he can lean in and murmur for Izaya’s hearing alone. “Where  _ is _ everyone?”

“A good question,” Izaya says, though he doesn’t sound like he’s paying much attention to Shizuo in the first place. He’s still looking around them, forehead creased and mouth set on consideration. “There ought to be  _ someone _ left, even if they intended a full retreat.”

“We might as well go exploring!” That is from Shinra, hugging closer to Celty than to Izaya but still close enough to hear the sound of the other’s words. He’s making no effort at all to soften his tone; his declaration rings off the encircling walls around them and draws more than one pair of eyes to his beaming smile. “If there’s no one here to claim it then the castle is yours by default, right?”

“I suppose so,” Izaya allows, and then pulls up a gleaming smile that flashes in the sunlight and entirely misses any kind of glitter in the dark of his gaze. He turns away from Shizuo and Shinra to spread his arms wide as he beams at the crowd collected behind him. “Make yourselves at home, friends! The queen is gone and I claim sovereignty of this place for myself and all my followers!” That gets him a cheer, uncertain at first and then gaining in force as Izaya goes on smiling, until the walls of the courtyard are ringing with the voices Izaya gained for himself. Izaya smiles benevolently at them all, for all the world as if he is already bearing a crown around his temples and sitting on a throne, before he waves his outstretched hands to gesture everyone to motion. “My first decree is one of welcome. Make yourselves comfortable, this place is my gift to you!” That earns him another cheer, louder than the first, before the crowd begins to disintegrate into individuals from the cohesive unit it had formed before. Izaya stays where he is, smiling at the crowd as it disperses around him, until there is no one left in the courtyard except for himself, and Shinra, and Celty, and Shizuo.

Shizuo frowns at the back of Izaya’s head. “Nice speech,” he says flatly. “You planning to let us in on your plan now?”

“Why Shizu-chan,” Izaya says, purring the words as he lets his arms fall and turns to smile back over his shoulder at Shizuo. “Why would you think I have any plan I’m not sharing with my devoted followers?” Shizuo gives him a flat look and Izaya cocks his head to the side as his smile pulls lopsided at one corner. “I  _ do _ think it might be wise to investigate the throne room, though. Just to be on the safe side.” He swings away from Shizuo’s hardening scowl to lift his eyebrows at Shinra and Celty. “You coming with us?”

Shinra shakes his head before Shizuo has a chance to focus himself enough to protest Izaya’s assumption about his own actions. “I want to explore the castle with Celty,” he says, reaching to interlace his fingers with Celty’s as he beams at them. “I’ve only been here a few times before and it’s hardly as if I had a free pass to look around. Who knows what kind of secrets might be waiting to be discovered!”

“Who indeed,” Izaya drawls. “I’ll leave you two to it then.” He turns away to glance at Shizuo again before jerking his head to indicate. “Come on, Shizu-chan.” And he’s striding away, moving past Shizuo and into the interior of the palace without waiting for an answer. Shizuo blinks, caught off-guard again by this casual assumption before he collects himself to growl in the back of his throat and turns to follow Izaya with a stride made heavy on irritation.

“ _Hey_ ,” he says, catching at the door Izaya has just pulled open and shoving it hard against the wall next to it as he stomps after the other. “Just so we’re clear, I’m not a servant you can just order around who will follow obediently wherever you go.”

“Oh I know,” Izaya says blithely. “I would hardly expect you to do anything obediently, Shizu-chan. I’m not going to ask the impossible from you, after all.” He tips his head to smile shadows at Shizuo before laughing at the other’s scowl and turning back forward again. “You’re welcome to go anywhere you like, just like everyone else. But you looked so lost out there in the courtyard, I thought you might prefer some guidance on where you should be going.”

Shizuo hisses irritation. “I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”

“And yet here you are,” Izaya says easily. “What a coincidence. Or are you just waiting for the opportune moment to follow through on that threat to kill me?” He turns his head to flutter the weight of his lashes into mocking flirtation. “How remarkably restrained of you to wait for a more private moment before committing regicide.”

Shizuo groans. “I’m not going to  _ kill _ you,” he says. Izaya pulls open a door and Shizuo reaches past him to hold the weight of it open. “How many times do I need to tell you that before you’ll believe me?”

“Mm,” Izaya hums. “Always once more, Shizu-chan.” He leaves the door to Shizuo’s keeping and strides forward into the room beyond, leaving Shizuo to frown at him before he steps forward to follow Izaya into the space.

It’s far larger than Shizuo had expected it to be. The palace is built on a grand scale, far larger than anything he is accustomed to from the confines of his private cabin, but the corridors are strangely tall and serpentine enough to feel claustrophobic no matter how wide-set the walls on either side may be. Shizuo’s shoulders have hunched towards his ears on reflex, as if setting themselves to fight back the weight of the stone bearing down against him; he doesn’t even realized he is so tense until the expanse of the room he steps into knocks the strain from his shoulders with the slack surrender of shock instead.

It’s as large as a clearing, as large as the entire village square, a vast, echoing space utterly bereft of any of the people that might grant it purpose. The walls are far distant, so removed they succeed in making Shizuo feel small when his ridiculous strength is usually enough to make him self-conscious about his motion in any kind of an enclosed space, and the ceiling seems to soar away from his gaze even as he looks for it. The space is enormous, big enough to contain all the villagers they brought with them ten times over without struggling; and at the far end, well distant from the massive door they have just come through, there is a throne elevated on a platform to raise it above the mundanity of the floor.

Izaya makes straight for it. Shizuo is still at the door, caught in the first impact of shock at the sheer size of the room looming around him; but Izaya strides forward as if he expected the vastness, as if he was sure before they ever came through the door that he would meet with no more resistance than what a single chair can offer, however cavernous the space in which it sits. Shizuo is left to stare after him before he can collect himself enough to growl frustration and move in pursuit at a pace that seems absurd for what is still an interior space but wholly justified given the distance he needs to cover.

He draws level with Izaya just as they come up to the front edge of the platform, which is high enough from up close to nearly reach Shizuo’s knees. Izaya doesn’t slow as they approach; he just steps up onto the platform as easily as if he’s accepting the outstretched hand of a nonexistent aide to set himself on a level with the empty throne before them. Shizuo stays where he is, standing at the edge of the platform and contenting himself with glaring up at Izaya now placed over him, though the other is looking at the waiting seat and not at his company. “What are you  _ doing_?”

“Taking my rightful place,” Izaya says, speaking easily but without much attention to the words. He leans over the throne to pick up something set at the middle of it.

Shizuo frowns. “What is that?” He steps up onto the platform so he can come forward and join Izaya, still standing in front of the throne but looking down, now, instead of at the waiting seat. Izaya lifts his head as Shizuo approaches, and then brings his hand to toss the object he’s holding towards the other. Shizuo rocks back, grimacing as he brings his hands up reflexively to catch the projectile. It lands solidly at his palm, hitting with a  _ thud _ as his fingers close around it, and Shizuo frowns and turns his hand to look.

“An apple?” he says. He looks back up to Izaya, frowning against the force of his confusion. “Why is there an apple here?”

“It’s for me,” Izaya says, and breaks into a grin that illuminates all his face wirth the brilliance of joy. Shizuo’s breath catches on the sparkle of color in Izaya’s eyes, his attention sticks to the curve of the smile across Izaya’s lips, but Izaya is turning away without waiting for Shizuo’s response to the first sincere smile he’s seen from the other since Izaya and Shinra began crafting the insane plan they’re in the middle of. Izaya braces a hand against the arm of the throne and pivots on the heel of his boot to cast himself down into it with casual grace. His leg tips wide, his shoulders angle back, and when he lifts his chin to beam up at Shizuo it is from an elegant recline in that seat that ostensibly carries all the power of the country with it. “My cousin’s last gift.”

Shizuo looks back at the fruit. “It just looks like an apple to me.”

“Mm,” Izaya hums. “To you it would.” He slouches into greater comfort in the throne. “From her it’s as good as a surrender.” His mouth tightens at the corner, his gaze darkens with satisfaction. “We’ve won.”

Shizuo frowns. “That was easy.”

Izaya shrugs. “It didn’t have to be,” he says. “She could have dug her guards in and made us take the castle by storm. She could have set Shijima to murder me on the bridge and let the consequences unfold as they might.” His smile softens, his lashes dip. “She could have found an assassin more willing to actually kill me.”

“Don’t push your luck,” Shizuo tells him. “You did your part in convincing me to do it too.”

Izaya laughs. “And you resisted all the same,” he says, and pushes up from the throne to step forward to where Shizuo is standing. “It just speaks to your true morality, obviously.” He lifts a hand to brush against the back of Shizuo’s neck before trailing down his shoulder and along the length of his arm. “Who would have thought the monster in the woods would have such a heart of gold?”

“Shut up,” Shizuo says, although there’s not much sincerity to add force to his words. His skin is shivering with heat he can feel right through the weight of his heavy shirt; the back of his neck is so hot he imagines the print of Izaya’s fingers at his bare skin must be visible in the color that has surged to answer them. Izaya looks up through his lashes at Shizuo, still curving a smile against his lips, and Shizuo swallows and looks away to the rest of the empty room around them.

“So what now?” he says, speaking more loudly than he needs to so he can hear his own voice over the rhythm of his heart pounding in his chest. He can feel the motion of each of Izaya’s fingers individually as the other’s touch slides down his arm like Izaya’s memorizing the shape of his body. “You’re just...king, that’s it, the end?”

Izaya laughs. The emptiness of the room echoes the sound back, bright like the bell it always seems. His hand draws back up towards Shizuo’s shoulder. Shizuo doesn’t pull away. “There’s a little more to ruling than sitting in a fancy chair,” he says. “A crown, mostly. We’ll get there soon enough, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried,” Shizuo says.

“No?” Izaya’s lashes dip to curtain his eyes in shadow. He’s still smiling but it’s softer, darker, with the razor edge blunted by the weight of his touch at Shizuo’s arm to something that looks almost like an invitation. Shizuo’s gaze drops, sticking itself to the vivid color of Izaya’s mouth, and Izaya’s lips curve wider as he shifts his weight to rock forward. He’s almost pressing against Shizuo, now, with how near they are standing and how close he is angled; Shizuo can feel the heat of Izaya’s breathing ghosting over his own mouth with each exhale. Izaya’s fingers wander down his arm, tugging the loose weight of his sleeve as they go. “What  _ are _ you, then, Shizu-chan?”

Shizuo frowns. “I’m,” he starts. Izaya’s fingers brush against his wrist. Shizuo’s fingers tighten reflexively, reaching for a hold he doesn’t have against the other’s arm, waist, hair. Izaya’s chin is lifted, his gaze is lingering at Shizuo’s mouth; the room is empty, the fight is over before it is begun, and there is no one here but the two of them in the echoing space of Izaya’s empty victory. Shizuo presses his lips together and swallows. His shoulders tip in, his head turns to match to Izaya’s. Izaya’s lashes dip, fluttering shut over his eyes; and then his fingers slide over Shizuo’s palm, and he’s pulling away, ducking out from the possibility of a kiss before it has formed.

“Too bad,” he says, light and bright and taunting, and he tosses his reclaimed apple up to make a bright arc through the air before catching it in his outstretched palm again. “I told you already you missed your chance.” He tips his head to smirk at Shizuo, still standing flushed and breathless with the anticipation that Izaya has so suddenly stripped from him. “Guess you’ll just have to wait for my royal favor to return to you, Shizu-chan.” And he lifts the apple to his mouth to sink his teeth into the crisp fruit.

Shizuo rocks back onto his heels, feeling as wounded as if Izaya had scored a knife across his chest. “Fuck you,” he growls, his hands curling towards fists at his sides. “You really expect me to just sit around and wait for you?” He takes a step forward, instinct adding the force of physicality to the impact of his words, but Izaya doesn’t move to push him away. Izaya doesn’t move at all, in fact, either to defend himself from Shizuo’s approach or to retreat to a safer distance; he just stands right where he is, staring at the apple in his hand.

Shizuo frowns. “Izaya,” he says, rasping irritation over the sound of the other’s name. Izaya blinks, hard, like he’s struggling for the motion, and it’s then that Shizuo sees his mouth. Izaya is always smiling, a smirk or a laugh or a secret always harboring itself at the curve of his lips; he smiled at their rebellion, smiled at Shijima’s threats, even smiled with Shizuo’s knife pressed to his throat. But his mouth is soft, now, his perpetual amusement surrendered into unconscious defeat, and Shizuo’s temper freezes to a chill too instinctive for him to resist.

“Izaya?” he says again, and steps forward to reach for Izaya’s shoulder.

He hasn’t even made contact when Izaya collapses, dropping to the floor with instant, boneless speed. Shizuo hisses a breath and lunges forward to try to catch him but it’s too immediate, and his outstretched arms find nothing but air as Izaya falls to the ground without so much as a cry of protest. His hand holding the apple falls open, the fruit drops to roll over the edge of the platform and to the floor beneath, but Shizuo doesn’t spare it so much as a glance. He’s reaching for Izaya, grabbing at a handful of his coat to pull him back and fitting his hand beneath the other’s head as if to retroactively save him from the blow of his fall as Shizuo drops to his knees and lifts Izaya back into his lap.

He can feel it as soon as he touches him. The speed of Izaya’s fall was clear enough to prove something was wrong all on its own; but there is no heat in the other’s body as Shizuo collects him into his arms. A moment ago his cheeks were flushed, his fingers radiant, his body glowing with life; as Shizuo turns the slack form in his arms over he can feel nothing, no sign of the least human warmth. Izaya’s eyes are closed as if in sudden, startling sleep, his soft mouth is as crimson-red as ever; but it’s the only color anywhere in his face. His skin is drained of hue as surely as it is drained of heat; he feels like the snow he appears to be, when Shizuo presses a trembling hand against his face. It is as if he has been transformed into a doll, beautiful and cold and utterly absent any trace of the life he radiated moments before, and in the first shock of loss Shizuo just stares at the face as beautiful as ever and totally devoid of the soul that so drew Shizuo in his wake.

“Help,” Shizuo finally thinks to say, and then to scream, lifting his head to shout into the echoing vastness of the throne room around him until he can hear the cracks on his voice bounced back for his own hearing, until he has gone hoarse and unrecognizable with the excess of volume he forces from his lungs. He screams, and screams, and finally the doors come open to spill Shinra, and Celty, and a half dozen others into the room in their wake, and it’s only in the focus of their shocked stares that Shizuo feels the tears on his face, and the desperate grip with which he is pressing Izaya to him, as if to force some measure of his own life back into the other’s still body.


	18. Cursed

The news breaks over the castle like a storm formed of silence. The distant celebrations fall still, voices raised in enthusiasm are stifled by breathless horror; Shizuo can almost feel the knowledge spread itself through the palace, as if he’s watching a wave break itself against the heavy weight of the walls that have never felt as oppressive as they do now. From person to person, voice to voice, the news spills outward:  _ the prince is dead_, and in the first blow of shock there is only quiet, a silence so loaded with force it is farther from peace than chaos would be.

They are moved out of the throne room, a fact to which Shizuo is grateful when he returns to himself enough to recognize that he has been persuaded into motion at all. He is in a far smaller room, some space given over to a servant or visiting quarters; it is almost reasonably sized to his eye, when he gathers himself sufficiently to take stock of his surroundings. He is sitting at the edge of a bed no larger than the one in his own cabin, the impossible weight of his body cast forward to press his elbows hard against his knees. He can recall stumbling down a hallway, when he reaches back into the ringing horror of the last hour, his feet moving with the weight of lead while he held Izaya’s lifeless body against his chest; but Izaya is nowhere to be seen in the room to which he has come, neither laid out on the floor nor arranged with needless care across the bed. Shizuo stirs to look around, to consider his surroundings with slow-forming concern; but there is no sign of Izaya, or of anyone beyond himself in this self-contained room. He starts to his feet, struggling with the weight of his body as much as with the direction in which he should go, and it’s just as he’s turning towards one of the two doors that the other opens, and Shinra steps through.

Shinra blinks and rocks back at seeing Shizuo on his feet. “Shizuo,” he says, sounding as surprised as he looks, although he rapidly recovers to offer a smile as he steps forward and through the doorway. “I didn’t think you’d be back with us yet. How are you doing?”

Shizuo scowls by way of answering this impossible question. “I’m here,” he says. His voice rasps in the back of his throat, dragged raw over the screams he can vaguely recall, shouts of horror and shock and directionless fury that echoed uselessly off the infinite distance of the throne room ceiling over him. His eyes are swollen with the effect of tears dried to crusting salt at his cheeks; he grimaces and lifts a hand to scrub the friction from his skin. “Where’s Izaya?”

Shinra lifts a hand to flutter vaguely through the air. “He’s in the next room,” he says, and takes an immediate step to the side to block the door when Shizuo moves to stride towards it. “There’s nothing you can do for him now, I’m afraid.”

Shizuo hisses a sound in the back of his throat. “I  _ know_,” he says. “I don’t think I can raise the dead, Shinra.”

Shinra chirps a laugh completely out-of-place against the ache of loss just starting to be felt in Shizuo’s chest. “Oh, Izaya’s not dead!”

Shizuo’s stomach drops, his sense of the world sweeping out from under him as if Shinra had kicked his knees away and left him to drop to the floor. He stares at Shinra for a moment, anticipating a retreat into a horrifically timed joke, or a conclusion to the statement to somehow undo the impossible hope that the words grant; but Shinra just blinks up at him, smiling at Shizuo as if they’re speaking about something with as much import as the timing of the spring thaw rather than the survival of the presumptive heir to the throne of the country. After a minute Shizuo works his throat over a struggling swallow and manages to give voice to the relief he doesn’t dare let himself feel yet. “What do you mean, he’s not dead? He wasn’t  _ breathing_, he was cold as ice, he--was it magic? Did you heal him somehow?”

Shinra blinks rapidly before he crackles another laugh and shakes his head. “Oh no,” he says brightly. “Of course not, I can’t do magic any more than you can! I just know how to recognize the signs of it.”

Shizuo sets his jaw. Loss is still looming at the back of his mind, waiting for the right moment to sweep in over him and destroy all his hope of any kind of peace for the foreseeable future; he shoves it back with a surge of temper, for once grateful for the raw heat of anger that ripples through him for the strength it grants to push back the realization of reality. “Shinra, just  _ tell _ me.”

“Of course,” Shinra says easily, with no sign of noticing the tension of Shizuo’s hands balling to fists at his sides or the forward angle of his shoulders canting into the beginnings of a threat just looking for a direction to guide it. “Izaya’s not dead, but he’s not what I would call alive at the moment, either. His body is in a...sort of stasis, I suppose is the best word for it.”

“Shinra--”

“It’s a curse,” Shinra goes on, speaking smoothly over Shizuo’s warning. “There was some kind of residual magic left in the throne room that he must have triggered. When it hit him he was knocked into a sort of sleep.”

“A  _ sleep_,” Shizuo repeats. “He’s not  _ breathing_.”

“Oh no!” Shinra agrees at once. “And he won’t be, either. So long as the curse is in effect he’ll be as good as dead.”

Shizuo call feel hope slipping through his fingers, disintegrating back into the bone-deep chill of Izaya’s skin under his touch, the impossible weight of Izaya’s unresponsive body cradled in his arms. “So he  _ is _ dead.” He sets his teeth together so he can drag a breath past them without having it shatter into a sob. His voice still shudders in his throat when he forces it to words. “She killed him after all.”

Shinra sighs. “No, no,” he says. “You’re not listening to me. He’s  _ cursed_, not actually dead. So long as he’s under the effect of whatever was done to him he could wake at any time, once the conditions are met. That’s how the magic works. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise.”

Shizuo disregards the second half of this statement in favor of the immediate relevance of the first. “It can be undone?” Shinra raises his eyebrows and opens his mouth to speak but Shizuo is talking over him without actually waiting for a reply. “Let’s do it then. What do I do?” He looks to the door behind Shinra’s shoulders and takes another step forward towards it, only to find Shinra’s outstretched hand catching at his shoulder to stop his motion. This results in Shizuo shoving Shinra back over the floor before he stops his forward movement himself so he can scowl at the other, but Shinra looks utterly unfazed by this as he turns the undimmed bright of his smile up at Shizuo.

“You don’t understand,” he says. “I know it’s a curse. Izaya’s been caught in a web of magic that’s holding him just as he was when it hit him. He won’t breathe, won’t age, won’t die; so long as he’s under the effects of the spell, he might as well be a statue as a living person.”

“Right,” Shizuo growls. “So we  _ break _ it.”

Shinra shakes his head. “We can’t,” he says. “Or, at least, we don’t know how.”

“You said there was a condition,” Shizuo says. “If we meet it--”

“But we don’t know what it is,” Shinra explains. “Curses can have all kinds of triggers. Some are dispelled by sunlight, or the perfume of a certain flower, or the touch of a child’s hand. Some last for a day, or a year, or forever, if the right conditions aren’t met. It’s impossible to guess at what will break this one without any kind of documentation on the requirements.” He pauses to lift an eyebrow and cock his head into curiosity. “I don’t suppose there was any kind of a note with this?”

Shizuo scowls. “No,” he says. “There was just the apple, and the throne, and us.”

Shinra sighs. “Well, there you have it,” he says, and lets his hand fall from Shizuo’s shoulder. “Without the key to breaking the spell we could spend the rest of our lives trying to wake him and never come close to succeeding. For all we know it could just be a matter of time and wear off after a hundred years pass.”

Shizuo’s hands go slack at his sides. “A  _ hundred years_?”

“That’s the classic time period,” Shinra says. “Or it could be a year, or a week, or a day.” He smiles brightly. “Of course, those are unusual curses. It’s far more likely that it requires some set condition to be met, and without knowing what it is he’ll remain as he is forever!” Shinra tips his head towards the shut door behind him and raises his eyebrows. “At least he’ll keep his looks. I imagine people will come for miles to catch a glimpse of the beautiful dead prince.”

Shizuo works over a swallow that does nothing to ease the knot in his throat. “He’s not dead.”

“Yes, but he might as well be,” Shinra laughs. “It’s not as if he’s likely to ever wake, after all.” He pats against Shizuo’s arm and beams up at him. “So you see, you might as well return to your usual life. I can’t imagine there’s anything you can do here.”

Shizuo pulls his arm away from Shinra’s touch. “I’m not leaving,” he says, and lifts his arm to push Shinra away from the door. Shinra stumbles to the side and out of the way and Shizuo reaches for the handle to wrench the door open.

Izaya is lying inside. There is a heavy table in this space, narrow for how long it is; Shinra must have had it brought in, for how much of the room it takes up, but Shizuo doesn’t spare more than a passing thought for that. His attention is on the figure laid out across the top of it, hands folded atop each other and eyes shut to weight dark lashes across pale cheeks. Shizuo doesn’t hear the sound of the door opening behind him again, doesn’t turn at the huff of Shinra’s entrance; he’s stepping forward instead, lifting a hand without thinking to touch against the pale of Izaya’s cheek.

He recoils on contact, startled in spite of himself by the chill of the other’s skin. There is none of the lingering heat that flushed Shizuo’s skin to such feverish glow with every glancing contact of Izaya’s reaching fingers or taunting smiles; the grace of the other’s motion is vanished, the taut amusement at his lips softened into an unconscious surrender until Shizuo hardly recognizes him but for the inky soft of his hair and the expensive weight of his clothes. He’s still wearing the same outfit Ruri crafted for him, the same coat he bore in the shadows of the carriage in the morning that feels a lifetime ago. Shizuo remembers a hand reaching out for him, remembers the weight of fingers skimming against his cheek; a hand still, now, laid to unresponsive elegance atop the other. Shizuo turns his head, looking down the length of Izaya’s body, and his vision blurs, his sight hazing with tears he doesn’t feel until they are burning at his eyes.

Shinra sighs. “You see what I mean,” he says. “There’s nothing you can do here.”

Shizuo shakes his head. “I’m staying.”

“Why?” Shinra asks, sounding as if he sincerely wonders over the answer.

Shizuo doesn’t reply. He doesn’t know the answer himself. He just draws back from Izaya’s body, moving away until his shoulders thud against the wall behind him and then sliding down the support to sit at the floor. Shinra stands next to him for a long minute, waiting for a reply Shizuo doesn’t have; and then he shrugs, and turns to leave the way he came. Shizuo is left alone, in a silence made heavy by the absence of a bright laugh, and a brighter smile, and he wonders when he lost his taste for peace.


	19. Stalled

Life keeps moving.

There is a day of shock, of muffled voices and distant tears and a pall that weights against everyone in the palace like a burden they weren’t expecting to bear after their assumed victory. Shizuo can feel it hanging in the air with every breath he takes, as if the very act of drawing breath has become a struggle against the effort of a world doing its best to suffocate all of them. The throne room remains empty, the palace echoes with the force of its own silence, and for a while, for a day, Shizuo doesn’t feel so alone.

But things change. The villagers disperse, trailing out of the grandeur of the palace and retreating to their homes; the servants reemerge from their hiding places where they intended to wait out whatever storm might sweep away one monarch and replace another. There is no ruler, or at least no ruler who can be considered living in any reasonable sense of the word; until Shinra returns from a jaunt to the village with the double weight of Ruri and Kasuka in his elegant carriage. Ruri assumes the position of regent, with the shared understanding that she has no interest in a permanent position as such; but she brings a measure of stability to the castle, and whatever she intends Shizuo can feel the structure of the palace forming itself around her as if the building itself is breathing a sigh of relief. The palace has a leader in practice to supplement the ruler who leads with the same threadbare claim with which he may be said to live, and with that necessity handled the world takes a breath, and turns itself towards the future, and seeks back out the rut of comfortable routine for itself once more. Life moves forward, carrying itself on with the simple truth of existence after loss; and Shizuo does not.

He hardly knows why. He has a home, has a life waiting for him; he should be affected least of anyone by the change in ruler. Kasuka has moved into the palace instead of his home at the outskirts of the village, but Shizuo hardly made a habit of visiting the constant threat of his own temper upon his brother’s success, and the forest doesn’t cares who sits or doesn’t upon the throne. Shizuo’s task is completed, his burden removed, his story over; he can take his position as a hero, and retreat to the peace of a quiet life, and let himself return to the person he was.

Except he can’t. He thinks of it, occasionally, in the endless hours he spends pacing around the room where Izaya has been laid out for any who wish to grieve or simply to satisfy their morbid curiosity about the beautiful prince caught in the grip of a deathlike curse. But the memory of his cabin has altered, has been touched unavoidably by the influence of Izaya within it, as if the sound of the other’s voice has seeped into the walls the same way the bright of his eyes caught at the flicker of firelight. Shizuo can’t imagine returning to the familiar walls made strange by the absence of something he had barely learned to crave; the thought of sleep is never more distant than when he remembers Izaya’s head next to his on the pillows of his bed and the almost-suggestion that curved the other’s lips as he looked at Shizuo next to him. In the span of mere days Izaya upended the whole of Shizuo’s life, unraveling the structure that Shizuo had found for himself and throwing him into a crisis far beyond Shizuo’s ability to manage; and now his absence has torn even deeper, to scour Shizuo’s life to an existence of waiting for something that may never come.

People visit him. It was Kasuka who brought the news of Ruri’s arrival, and who sat next to Shizuo alongside the table that serves Izaya for a bier for an hour with no more than companionable silence to fill the room around them. Shizuo appreciated the quiet far more than the effusive sympathy he has received from some of the village girls and the handful of the palace servants who know him no better than they do Shinra. Shinra comes by too, always as energetic as the first day and with no visible tendency towards sympathy or grief either one. He is primarily interested in running tests on Izaya’s still form, or bearing in an armful of possible cures to apply in succession to the cursed prince. Shizuo protested this the first time, under some vague sense of disrespect to the figure who it is easier to see as a corpse, even if his beauty remains utterly unmarred by the passage of hours into days into weeks, but Shinra ignored him outright and Shizuo lacks the will to truly push back. There is always the chance that Shinra will find the solution, however unlikely that may be, and without anything else to structure the forward flow of his existence Shizuo figures he can cling to futile hope as much as anything else.

And there is Celty. She comes every day, when Kasuka and Ruri are occupied with affairs of state and when Shinra is distracted by collecting new ideas or just busy with whatever else he does when he isn’t affixing himself as closely to Celty’s side as he can get. There are times when Celty’s dedication flickers guilt through Shizuo, as if he is putting her life as much on hold as he has his own; but he can’t deny the comfort that her company brings him, and as the days go by he is too grateful to the routine her visits grant to muster protest sufficient to get her to stop.

She arrived early, this morning, armed with a basket of rolls and a jug of tea from the kitchens. Shizuo eats when he remembers to, which is to say when people bring him food or he grows hungry enough for physical necessity to win out over the stasis that seems to have sunk itself into the core of his body to sap the heat of life from his blood, and this morning Celty’s provisions are as welcome as her company. Shizuo accepts the food, and the tea, and for half of an hour he forgets the weight of his sustained loss for the immediate, simple pleasure of tearing into rolls hot from the oven and swallowing honey-sweet tea straight from the edge of the jug.

It’s Celty who breaks the silence, as Shizuo is reaching into the basket for one of the last rolls to tear it into halves for easier eating. She clears her throat, which is warning enough for Shizuo to look up and find her with her head bowed and her gaze fixed firmly on her hands. “Shinra and I will be leaving soon.”

Shizuo’s briefly-held comfort gives way like smoldering coals drenched in water. “Oh.” He looks down to the roll in his hands as he tries to remember what he was doing with it. The memory of hunger seems impossibly distant. “Yeah. Sure.” He tries for a smile. “You can’t stick around here forever. You’ve got a home to get back to.”

Celty takes a breath. “So do you.”

Shizuo doesn’t look up from the roll in his hands. He tears a bite off one of the pieces as a means to delay giving any kind of a response. Celty turns her head to look sideways at him before she continues.

“This has been a...a tragedy” and Shizuo thinks he would be grateful to her just for the way her voice trembles over real emotion at that last word, with a sincerity of feeling that echoes some part of the vast hollowness in his own chest. “It’s a shame that Ruri and Kasuka got pulled into things. But they have the castle under control, and the rest of it will get better with time. You could...you could go back to your cabin. Go back to your life.” She lifts a hand to press gently against Shizuo’s shoulder. “You don’t need to stay here.”

Shizuo grimaces at the roll in his hands without looking up. “Yeah,” he says. “I know.” He tears at the bread but doesn’t take another bite. He isn’t sure he’d be able to swallow it past the knot in his throat. He frowns and shakes his head. “I just...I can’t leave him.”

Celty’s fingers tighten against him. “Oh Shizuo.”

“It’s not what you think,” Shizuo says, and lifts his head to meet the sympathy written with such perfect clarity in every line of Celty’s expression and every angle of her body. She’s prepared for grief, for an endless ocean of loss; Shizuo almost feels bad for having such strange calm to offer her. “It’s not that I’m...pining, or something. Not exactly. I just…” He looks back to the pieces of the roll between his fingers. “I  _ can’t _ leave.”

There is a pause. Someone else might speak into the quiet, might try to offer up the words Shizuo is struggling for. Celty just stays silent, her hand steady at his shoulder and the peace waiting for whatever he has to say, until Shizuo can collect himself enough to take a breath and continue.

“He needs me,” he says, speaking softly enough that he can barely hear himself. “It feels like...there’s something I’m supposed to do, still, and I haven’t done it.”

“I don’t think there’s anything you  _ can _ do,” Celty says carefully. “Shinra says--”

“I know,” Shizuo says, feeling bad even as he speaks for cutting Celty off but not able to help himself. “I know it’s stupid. It doesn’t make any sense. I hardly knew him. I don’t even know if I  _ liked _ him, most of the time.” He frowns himself towards some truth waiting for him in the silence, like some fragment of whatever it is that has held him here for the last long, silent days, that has kept him holding vigil over the still form of the prince who has cursed Shizuo’s life as thoroughly as his own has been. “But I don’t think I can go back to the way life was now that I know he’s…” He lifts his hand to gesture generally through the air. “Out there. Somewhere.”

Celty’s hand tightens at Shizuo’s shoulder as she breathes over a shocked exhale. “Shizuo,” she says. “You sound like…”

“I know,” Shizuo says, and drops the torn-apart roll back into the basket so he can lift his hand to scrub across his face. “I sound crazy.”

Celty huffs a laugh. “That’s not what I was going to say.” Shizuo turns his head to look at her. Celty meets his gaze for a moment before she ducks her head to look at her lap, where she’s caught a thread of the embroidery on her skirt between her fingers and is worrying it.

“I was going to say,” she starts, and hesitates for the briefest moment before she continues on. “You sound like Shinra.”

Shizuo doesn’t need an explanation. He’s known Shinra for the greater part of his life, and has spent the vast majority of that friendship hearing in exquisite and often excruciating detail about exactly how impossible it is for Shinra’s existence to continue on without Celty at his side. He opens his mouth to protest, to reject the comparison and all the implication that comes with it; but the lie is too great, when he can feel the echo of Shinra’s words still heavy on his tongue.  _ I can’t live without Celty_, Shinra had said, and still says, if ever asked.  _ I might exist, but it would be hollow and pointless now that I know what happiness I can find at her side_.

“I,” Shizuo says. His voice is rasping in his throat as if he’s pushing it past the tension of tears, but he can’t tell what he’s feeling, can’t put a name to the chaos of emotion rippling through his chest and burning at the backs of his eyes. He shakes his head. “I don’t even  _ like _ him.”

Celty takes a breath. “I’m not sure that that matters,” she says. She stays still for another moment, her hand pressing warm against Shizuo’s shoulder, before she squeezes against his arm and moves to get to her feet.

“I’ll let you know when we’re going,” she says. “Maybe you can come to see us off?”

Shizuo blinks and ducks his head forward. “Yeah,” he says. “Sure, Celty.” His voice is still ringing in his ears, hard to hear over the thundering weight of realization that has broken over him, but as Celty turns to move away Shizuo takes a breath and lifts his head.

“Hey, Celty.” She pauses to look back at him. Shizuo struggles for a smile and finally contents himself with a nod. “Thanks.”

Celty smiles at him. “Of course,” she says. “Take care of yourself, Shizuo.” And she turns to slip out of the door, leaving Shizuo alone with his thoughts and with Izaya.


	20. Saved

It’s quiet in the palace at night.

It’s quiet during the day, too. Since Shinra and Celty left to return to their estate and the comfortable routine awaiting them there, Shizuo’s days have fallen into a rhythm that is almost entirely uninterrupted by any kind of contact with the world outside the room in which he has ensconced himself. The servants come by at regular intervals, something Shizuo suspects he can thank Celty for arranging before her departure, but they rarely offer any conversation to go with the meals they bring, and Shizuo has even less to say in turn. Sometimes there are visitors, wide-eyed strangers who come to gawk at Izaya and ignore Shizuo in the corner of the room like he’s not even there; Shizuo is grateful for their disregard, if only because it spares him the necessity of failing politeness with those who see the cursed prince as no more than a spectacle to be stared at. But mostly there is just Shizuo, and Izaya, still and cool as marble where he lies undisturbed by breath or heartbeat alike, and there is nothing at all to disturb Shizuo from his ceaseless, pointless vigil.

There is something comfortable in it. Shizuo has spent his whole life declaring his love for peace, his boundless desire for solitude and calm; and now he has it, albeit not in the way he ever imagined. He is tied to the castle, fixed to his position as watchman over a prince held in a deathlike trance by a queen’s malicious curse, and as the days pass into weeks Shizuo feels as if some part of his own life is drawing back to match, to leave him as much a statue in his own way as Izaya appears to be where is laid out across the table draped in the cloth dyed with rich enough hues to suit the king he would be, if he were conscious to claim his throne. It’s not pleasant, exactly -- even Shizuo can’t feel content in a life proscribed to the span of a room, hemmed in by the weight of stone that seems sometimes to be trying to crush the breath right from him -- but there is a peace to it, especially as the first blow of loss ebbs away into hollow, silent absence, and Shizuo is content enough to let resignation weight his limbs to hold him to the hopeless futility of his charge.

He spends all his time with Izaya. For the first weeks the servants offered him a room of his own, providing unsubtle suggestions that he retire for the night to a more comfortable bed when they came in the door with the baskets of bread and meat and pastries to offer the sustenance necessary for Shizuo’s continued existence, if not for Izaya’s. But after days of Shizuo refusing or simply ignoring the suggestions entirely they stopped coming, until Shizuo is left in peace to drowse against the cold stone beneath him or at the corner of the wall, as if there is any chance he might be called upon by the form that has remained utterly unmoving and unresponsive to any efforts made by Shizuo or Shinra or strangers to stir him. Shizuo’s dreams are dark things, nightmares of screams and blood and loss, as something indescribably precious slips past his reaching fingers no matter how he strains for it; he prefers the shallow, restless sleep he finds for himself in the corner of the room to the darkness that waits to claim him from the greater physical comfort of a bed.

He’s fallen asleep sitting up, tonight. Sometimes he’ll give way to exhaustion enough to stretch himself out across the back edge of the room and pillow his head on his arm before shutting his eyes; but today was a bad day, with the ache of Izaya’s stillness digging deep into his chest no matter how he tried to retreat from it, and finally he gave himself up to the minimal comfort that comes of gazing at Izaya’s face, of tracing and retracing the curve of his red mouth and the arc of his dark lashes. Shizuo had stared for a long, unmeasured span of time, letting the echoing silence of the room play audience to his obsessive, pointless attention, until finally his eyelids grow too heavy to hold up, and he succumbs to the pull of sleep without consciously feeling it sweeping over him.

He is caught in a dream, a gentler one than the darkness that usually comes for him at night. This is built on the shape of a memory, a fantasy fitting itself to the structure of experience instead of invention: Shizuo feels the glow of sunlight on his skin, smells the crisp cool of open air around him. And Izaya is there with him, laughing up into the sunshine flashing bright at his teeth and stirring the dark of his eyes to glimmering red as he angles his head up towards Shizuo in a suggestion too obvious for Shizuo to mistake. There’s a smile tangled at his lips, an invitation in the shadow of his lashes, and when he flutters his gaze across the shape of Shizuo’s face Shizuo’s own attention follows Izaya’s lead to slide along the line of his nose and down to the part of his scarlet lips. Izaya’s head tips farther to the side, his smile softening to the surrender of expectation, and Shizuo is leaning in, dipping his head to give the answer that Izaya is waiting for, the only reply he can possibly give to that unspoken question. He draws a breath, his mouth lowering to fit itself to the taste of Izaya’s lips; and then he’s jerking upright, his eyes opening on darkness instead of light as the forest and the sunshine and Izaya vanish from around him.

The disorientation is too strong to handle for the first moment. Shizuo blinks hard, working to clear his vision as much of the afterimage of his dream as of the shadows of his present reality; his heart is still racing, his skin still flushed with the heat of an expectation that has been dragged free of his hold by the brutal, abrupt return to reality. For a moment he feels his heart plummet, as recollection strips away the brief comfort of forgetfulness from him; and then there’s the scuff of a footstep, and a curse, short and sharply cut off, and Shizuo’s attention snaps into instant focus as his disappointment is forgotten in the sudden attention to the moment.

Something is moving in the room. Shizuo might not notice, in another space, at another time; but he has spent weeks with no breath stirring the air here but his own, and he can feel the presence of someone, or something, else like a hand has been placed against the back of his neck. All is dark, the room fallen to the absolute black that it finds with the burning out of the torch in the shadows of night; Shizuo can’t even see the shape of Izaya’s still form on the table no more than a few strides away from where he has fallen asleep. But even in the dark the drag of another breath sounds loud, echoing like a shout as rasping inhales catch against the softer draw of Shizuo’s, and Shizuo sits still and silent and feels his whole body taut with the premonition of a danger he senses even without putting a name to it.

There is nothing for a long moment, no sign of anyone’s presence but the pant of that breathing that sounds so loud against the peace to which Shizuo has so entirely accustomed himself. Shizuo’s own breathing is loud enough to announce himself in turn, of course -- he can hardly stifle the rhythm of his heartbeat, and his breath must follow suit, however tightly panic has clenched around his chest -- but the intruder isn’t listening for it, or perhaps lacks the familiarity with the space to recognize the soft murmur of breathing stirring the air, because after a moment the shadows draw back, unveiling like a curtain being pulled away from a figure standing by the doorway. The intruder is still cast into darkness, their face shadowed almost out of seeing even in the blaze of illumination that spills from the flaming torch they carry in one upraised hand; but they are radiating like a beacon against the oppressive black of the room, as clear to see as if they had shouted announcement of their presence. Shizuo’s eyes burn with even the meager light from the single torch, his vision blurring for a moment of terrifying blindness as he ducks his head and blinks his sight back to clarity; but the intruder is as single-minded as visitors always are, and doesn’t glance to see Shizuo still cloaked in the shadows accumulating in the far reaches of the room. They rasp a sigh, the sound shaking over force as it spills past their lips, and when they step forward to speak their words are to the form laid on the pedestal before them and not that listening silently from the shadows in the corner.

“At last,” they say, and Shizuo knows that voice, however taut with strain and hatred it may be pulled. He blinks, trying to find his way back to sight as the last of the light-blindness clears from his vision, and the newcomer draws closer to the edge of the platform where Izaya is laid, the pool of light from their torch casting a flickering halo around them. “After all this time revenge is at hand.” The torch lifts up, the shadows clear from the intruder’s face: and Shizuo sees him, the details of Shijima’s face cast into stark clarity by the gauntness of his form and the shadows that stick to the hollows of his cheeks and the tension at his eyes. He looks haunted, possessed, as if the fire of hatred has burned away whatever health he once had; even under the smudged-in ashes with which he has darkened his skin he looks sickly, his skin nearly grey and his lips chapped to bloody color. He doesn’t look around the room, doesn’t spare so much as a glance for the possibility of an audience; his focus is fixed on Izaya before him, lit now by the reaching illumination of his upraised torch to a mockery of the life that was so cruelly stripped from him.

“As good as dead already,” Shijima says, purring over the words to himself; and then he laughs, bright and manic, as he lifts his free hand from the weight of his shadow-dark robes to hold it over Izaya’s still chest. “And no one to care, now, if you give up your last hope of life.” His hand begins to glow, throbbing with a blood-red heat that pulses like a heartbeat around his reaching fingers. “I wonder how long your beauty will last as a corpse?” And he reaches out, his palm stretching out as his fingers strain towards Izaya’s chest.

Shizuo doesn’t think about moving. Shizuo has never paused for thought in the midst of a crisis; there is never time, never a delay great enough to give his careful attention the time to come to a conclusion and determine how best to act on it. His body seizes control from his mind in moments like this, the tension of danger clutching at the back of his skull to lunge him forward and into action, regardless of the outcome he may or may not want. Shizuo has always hated that about himself, has hated the raw instinct that propels him into motion when his temper flares hot enough to scour away his sanity; and in this moment, it is that intuition that jolts him to his feet and throws him forward as part of the same action, casting him free of the shadows and towards Shijima without any conscious thought. There is no hesitation in his body, no space to fear the light building at Shijima’s hand or the repercussions of giving away his position in the shadows: Shizuo’s body carries him forward before he knows he is moving, flinging him into such action that he is atop Shijima before he realizes that he has even risen to his feet. Shijima’s head turns as if in slow motion, his eyes going wide with horrified recognition as Shizuo lunges at him; and then Shizuo’s clenched fist comes up to connect with the side of Shijima’s jaw, and the blow slams into the other’s face, crushing skin and cracking bone as Shijima is knocked right off his feet by the impact of his head snapping sideways with the punch. He yelps a sound of panic, sharp and high and snapped off cleanly as he is flung across the room to slam into the wall and collapse into a boneless heap. The light around his hand winks out, the forming magic disintegrating with the abrupt break in his awareness; the torch topples to the floor, the length of it rattling over the stone as the fire hisses and spits.

Shizuo doesn’t spare a glance for Shijima’s collapsed form. He’s turning back to the table, to where Izaya is lying as still and silent as ever. The torch sputters on the floor, throwing uncanny shadows across the room as it flickers, and Shizuo ducks down to pick it up as much to steady the illumination as to lift up the light so it falls clear over Izaya’s face.

He looks the same as ever. His lashes are dark, his mouth is soft, his cheekbones are arching to delicate beauty; and Shizuo doesn’t need to brush his fingers to that pale skin to know it will be as chill as ice, doesn’t need to press to the column of Izaya’s white throat to see the lack of any kind of a pulse there. The sight of Izaya lying as still as death is one Shizuo has grown unwillingly accustomed to, if not comfortable with; but his heart is racing with the panic of seeing Shijima’s upraised hand, and Izaya’s familiar stillness is enough to stab icy fear through his every breath. Izaya looks the same as ever, looks to be caught in the grip of the same curse that seized him with the press of his lips to the apple in the throne room; but Shizuo has no way of knowing what it was Shijima intended to do, if it was to dispel the magic that has held Izaya in such stasis or simply to snuff out what glimmer of potential life yet lingers in the other. Shizuo stares at Izaya’s still face, desperately seeking some indication of Shijima’s failure, some proof that Shizuo acted in time to save what remains of Izaya’s life; but there is nothing he can see, no difference to his eye between cursed and truly murdered. Izaya could be lost now, for all Shizuo knows, the thread of his life snapped away in the moment that Shizuo sat still and staring in the darkness; and Shizuo feels his throat tighten on a knot of emotion as his eyes burn and blur with tears.

“Izaya,” he grates, dragging the other’s name past the tension in his throat with an effort that leaves his voice ragged and bleeding with emotion. There is no one to hear him, no one to answer but the echo of his voice off the walls, the sound of his own misery reflected back to overcome him more thoroughly than the strength of an army could. Shizuo ducks his head over Izaya, lost to him past retrieval whether Shijima succeeded or not, and under the crushing weight of his own defeat it’s nothing more than instinct that bows his head over Izaya’s. Shizuo’s vision blurs, his sight hazed out of all clarity by the tears in his eyes, and as the light of the torch flickers around them he catches a ragged breath, and his lips brush the corner of Izaya’s mouth.

Shizuo doesn’t mean to make the contact. He’s past thinking, his rationality swept away by the force of his instinctive response to a perceived threat; his motion is an expression of grief as much as anything else, as if the tears in his eyes are a weight drawing him down to lay his body against Izaya’s and wait for the chill of one to spread and claim the other. His mouth touches Izaya’s, his lips ghosting against the cold give of the other’s; except they aren’t cold at all. Perhaps Izaya’s mouth has been warmed, however briefly, by the aching sob Shizuo spent against his lips; perhaps it’s an illusion carried by Shizuo’s scattered thoughts that takes the flush of heartbreak under his skin and spills it to the seeming of life against Izaya’s. But for a moment, for that first glancing touch, Izaya’s lips seem to glow with living heat under Shizuo’s, as if he is caught in no more than the sleep that his appearance suggests. Shizuo’s exhausted mind struggles, reaching for understanding from a moment of impossibility, and as he strains for coherency his body follows the guidance of impulse, and tips his head to fit his mouth flush against Izaya’s.

It’s not just an illusion. Izaya’s mouth  _ is _ warm, his lips surrender-soft under the weight of Shizuo’s and his skin impossibly, illogically radiant. Shizuo’s heart skips, stuttering over the unreality of finding warmth waiting instead of chill, of this unlooked-for heat amidst the ice that has frozen all his hopes before now, and his hand is coming up, his fingers reaching to claim their share of this impossibility. His hand catches at Izaya’s hair, his thumb skims the other’s neck: and there is heat, warmth, a flush enough to more than match the burn of his mouth against Shizuo’s, the shift of his lips parting on shock, the flex of his chest as he--

Shizuo jerks back, pulling away as his mind finally regains control of his body from the resonant satisfaction of instinct. His mouth is burning, his lips aching with the friction of Izaya’s beneath his own, but he has no chance at all to think about what he’s just done, to linger in the pleasure that has gripped the length of his body, because Izaya is gasping, is moving, is  _ breathing_, and Shizuo jerks his hand away, stumbling backwards from the table as Izaya reaches to clutch at the edge of the support as his back arches and his eyes open wide with shock. He drags a breath, pulling it deep into his lungs as if he’s coming up from beneath the surface of the water, as if he’s just escaped the grip of a watery grave; and then he collapses to the table, panting for air and blinking at the ceiling overhead as if stunned.

Shizuo stares. He is still holding the torch aloft, still casting a pool of light through the room to illuminate the greater part of the scene before him, but for a moment the sight is too unbelievable for him to trust his eyes. Izaya is breathing, is moving, is  _ awake_; and then his head turns, and his eyes meet Shizuo’s uncomprehending stare. They gaze at each other for a moment, Shizuo shocked and Izaya breathless; and then the corner of Izaya’s mouth drags up, and he offers a grin Shizuo had thought he would never see again.

“Hey there, Shizu-chan,” he says. “What’d I miss?”


	21. Heated

Just like that, Shizuo’s peace is shattered.

It was only a temporary calm. He had known that, even in the oppressive silence of a room quiet and still as a tomb; even if he had spent the rest of his years watching over Izaya’s unmoving, unaging form, it would have been a pause in the span of his life, not the forward flow of it. There was something unnatural to Shizuo’s vigil, just as there was to Izaya’s deathlike trance; it was never intended to linger even as long as the weeks to which his own sense of necessity stretched it. But it had become routine, a familiarity that provided comfort even with Shizuo’s awareness of the artificiality of his halted state, and in the first breaking of that habit Shizuo finds himself as hopelessly overwhelmed as if he had stepped out of his cabin and directly into the middle of a screaming crowd.

Izaya’s revival causes an uproar. He takes almost no time at all to collect himself; no sooner has he flashed that grin at Shizuo than he’s pushing himself to sit upright, and then to stand, with more grace than Shizuo expected from someone who has spent the last several weeks lying unmoving in the shadows of the room around them. Whatever stasis has held Izaya’s appearance so unchanged has worked on his body as well, it seems, because there is no hesitation in his stride, no uncertainty in his action as he cuts across the room to reach for the door and fling it open. He’s out into the hallway at once, his boots rapping hard against the floor to announce his arrival as his voice pitches high to fly ahead of the sound of his steps, and Shizuo is left standing in the room now empty except for himself, and the flickering light of the torch he is still holding, and the fallen form of Shijima slumped against the wall.

The palace erupts into action in the wake of Izaya’s revival. By the time Shizuo has collected himself enough to follow Izaya through the door into the hallway he can hear the chaos spilling through distant corridors, shouts and exclamations and the occasional overexcited scream echoing down the stone halls. A contingent of guards finds him at the first crossing, stern-faced even with the shock of Izaya’s waking lingering bright behind their eyes, and Shizuo is swept back the way he came, carried by the force of their questions as they go in search of the intruder and would-be-assassin Izaya has evidently sent them after. They find a woozy Shijima just starting to stir to incoherent confusion from his brief unconsciousness, and they carry him away as well, all four guards collecting to form a square around their one unsteady prisoner to bear him away to the cells beneath the castle. Shizuo watches them go, disoriented as much by his own shock as by the speed of recent events, and finally he sets the torch he is still bearing in the holder by the door of the room that has marked out the span of his recent existence and goes in search of the prince.

Izaya is in the throne room by the time Shizuo trails the sound of raised voices and disbelieving joy through the winding corridors of the castle to their source. Kasuka and Ruri are on the dais with him, heavy-eyed with the lateness of the hour but looking far more composed at Izaya’s survival than Shizuo feels. The rest of the palace seems to share Shizuo’s shock more than the calm of the regents: the room is as full as Shizuo has ever seen it, the crowd gaining in number with every wide-eyed addition who bursts into tears at the sight of Izaya standing beaming at the crowd before him. Shizuo is sure the greater part of these servants have barely glimpsed Izaya’s face before now, and surely none know the least thing about his ability to rule; but the enthusiasm in the room is a living thing, coursing from person to person in a wave, until Shizuo thinks the strangers around him might be more thrilled in Izaya’s resuscitation than he is himself.

Shizuo doesn’t know how he feels. Dizzy, mostly, shocked and confused and utterly adrift in the crush of humanity that he has spent weeks avoiding. He has hardly so much as spoken to another person in the span of the last week; to be so borne along by the force of the emotion rippling around him is overwhelming in a way he hardly knows how to understand. Strangers clutch at his arm, turn their heads up to beam delight at him as if expecting to see their own happiness reflected on his face, while Shizuo is still trying to gain traction on a reality that feels more like a fever dream than anything else. His world seems to have fractured somewhere in the midst of the flickering torchlight and Shijima’s upraised hand and the press of his mouth against Izaya’s lips, until now all Shizuo can see is the distance between himself at the doorway of the throne room and Izaya standing so far away that Shizuo can hardly even make out the curve of his smile. Shizuo lingers at the doorway, staring at the far-off figure of the man he has spent weeks watching over; and then he turns away, and ducks out of the crush of people into the quiet of the hallway.

There is a relief just to being in a different space. Shizuo’s heart is racing, his breath coming fast enough to satisfy any one of the enthusiastic audience within the throne room, but it is his own thoughts that have such a hold on him, that demand the focus of his attention before he can even consider the ramifications of Izaya’s revival. He turns away from the throne room, ducking his head and hunching his shoulders against the shouted news breaking itself to waves down the corridors and through the rooms of the palace, and as he begins to move his feet find a rhythm, a steady beat that provides comfort even as he struggles himself back over the frantic events of the last half-hour in an attempt to find stability from amidst them.

Izaya is awake. That much is a fact, incontrovertible no matter what else Shizuo may doubt; he lives, breathes, speaks, returned to every aspect of his old self as rapidly as he was pulled from them initially. The curse is broken, vanished as thoroughly as Shinra had indicated it could be, if they could only find the key.

Which Shizuo did, he supposes, however unintentionally. He lifts a hand to touch his fingers to his lips, as if seeking out the traction of whatever magic spilled from him to Izaya with the weight of his mouth brushing the other’s; but there is nothing to feel, just the tense set of his lips pressed tight around the same strain in his shoulders and guiding the pace of his feet. The impossible warmth that was there for a moment, as life stirred and heat flushed against his lips, is gone now, as unreachably distant as Izaya himself, returned to life and lost to Shizuo at one and the same time. Shizuo hardly wishes Izaya back in the crushing silence of that room, hardly wishes to return to the resignation that has trapped him for so many uncounted days; but he doesn’t know where else to go, with the center point to his life abruptly removed, and it’s no surprise when his feet draw to a stop and he looks to find the torch he carried out of the room burning in the holder before him.

It’s brighter inside, when Shizuo pushes open the door and steps through. Someone must have come here, perhaps disbelieving servants or the guards returning to look for further evidence of Shijima’s forestalled attack: there are torches lining the walls, now, enough to illuminate the whole of the room with their golden light even as they flicker in their holders. The table is still where it was, the sumptuous cloth still left draping it; it is only Izaya who is gone, having risen from death to return to a life that has chased Shizuo back into the quiet that is all he thinks he can bear with shock ringing so loud in his thoughts. Shizuo lifts a hand to touch against the edge of the drapery, to feel the cool weight of the fabric spilling over his fingers; and then he lets it go, and moves past the table to return to the corner where he settled himself hours ago in expectation of waiting out another uneventful night. Events have caught up to him, have surged forward into a future that he has long since given up as impossible; but here it is quiet, still and forgotten in the wake of the miracle that has drawn the rest of the palace to the throne room, and in the peace Shizuo can drop to sit in the corner, and tip his head back, and shut his eyes against the chaos of reality for a time.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there. His heart slows its frantic pace, his breathing eases from the tension that held him in the first shock of disbelief; and reality unfolds around him, spreading itself into his awareness with a clarity that Shizuo has only ever found in silence and solitude. Izaya is awakened, the curse is broken, the king lives; and Shizuo’s role is done, his one necessary act completed. He failed to kill Izaya when he was told to, schemed and aided in the rebellion, set himself to a silent watch spanning weeks; and now he has returned Izaya’s life to his own keeping, free of any jealous cousins or plotting assassins. Izaya has his throne, and his palace, and his life, and Shizuo has nothing more to offer him, nothing that can be of any use to a man who holds the whole of the country in his outstretched hand.

There is nothing keeping him here. The thought of leaving Izaya to his cursed fate was intolerable, carrying a bitterness that turned Shizuo’s stomach to so much as contemplate, but there is no one in need of protection now, no one who can have any use for a huntsman far from his forest. Celty had urged Shizuo to leave, to return to the comfort of the life he left behind him, and now Shizuo can see that he can, that he has finally set himself free of the weight of his own self-inflicted responsibilities. He could leave now, tonight, this moment, could get to his feet and slip out of the gates of the castle and make his way to the home still waiting for him, freed now of the ghost that has so haunted him. He will hardly be missed, in the joy of Izaya’s revival; and yet Shizuo sits still, fixed in place as if bound where he is even as he considers the benefits of a departure rapid enough to remove the need for a royal order demanding his absence. He can take his life back for himself, can vanish back to the calm waiting for him in his cabin; and he doesn’t, doesn’t move and doesn’t stand and doesn’t leave, just remains sitting still and silent and patient for something he has no name for, with Izaya stripped from him.

Time passes. The torches burn themselves down in their holders, the flame smoldering away at its fuel in exchange for the glow of light filling the room; and Shizuo sits, his knees drawn up and elbows resting against them and gaze fixed out somewhere in front of him, lost and hazy in the middle distance. Far off there is the sound of voices, the patter of footsteps falling to silence. Quiet holds for a moment, stretches long into the span of minutes; and then the door shifts, pushing smoothly open as it moves over the floor, and Izaya steps into the room on silent feet.

Shizuo stares. It is not that he wasn’t expecting Izaya; it is that he expected no one at all, that he expected to be left to forgetful peace in the midst of a palace overflowing with joy at the return of its king. But that king is here, leaning against the door to ease it back into place as he cocks his head to look at Shizuo on the far side of the room, and if anyone has noticed his absence there is no audience to follow him into a space that seemed overfull, suddenly, with the weight of two breaths fitting together in the air around them.

Izaya stays where he is after stepping into the room. The fabric-draped table sits between them, speaking with its very presence to the weeks that have passed here; weeks that only Shizuo lived through, while Izaya hovered in the cursed existence to which he has been bound. He’s awake now, on his feet and meeting the weight of Shizuo’s attention head-on, but he doesn’t speak, and for a long moment Shizuo doesn’t either. He just looks, sitting still on the floor as he gazes at Izaya on his feet and breathing and alive before him, and he feels his chest clench tight as a fist around the rhythm of his heart pounding against his ribs.

It is Izaya who breaks eye contact, eventually, lifting his eyebrows and turning his head as if he is collecting himself to polite conversation in response to Shizuo’s astonishing display of rudeness. “I like what you’ve done with the place,” he says. His voice is as bright as Shizuo remembers and twice as sharp, bladed to a sword edge to slash across the distance between them. “It’s very cozy, really. I don’t suppose you’ve considered moving to a mausoleum? If this is any indication it would suit your taste.”

Something in Shizuo sparks, heat stirred to rise instinctively to the bait of Izaya’s bright mockery and teasing tone. “Fuck you,” he says. “I don’t  _ like _ it here.”

“No?” Izaya lifts his chin and lowers his lashes so the vivid of his gaze is cast to the shadows of possibility under their weight. “But Shizu-chan, where else will you find corpses to kiss?”

Shizuo hisses. His hand shoves at the floor with force enough to propel him to his feet, hunched forward to defend himself against the blow of Izaya’s words. “Shut  _ up_, Izaya.”

“Don’t like to hear the truth?” Izaya purrs.

“It’s  _ not _ the truth.”

“No?” Izaya tips his head to the side. His hair spills around his face like shadow given form to brush across the elegant details of his features. “You wouldn’t kiss me before, no matter how many times I offered.”

“I--” Shizuo starts, temper urging him into a rebuttal before the meaning of Izaya’s words has stolen his breath and left him voiceless. For a moment the room hangs in complete silence; then he closes his mouth, and swallows, and speaks more gently. “As if you were serious.”

“Who said I wasn’t?” Izaya straightens from the door and steps forward, lifting a hand without looking away from Shizuo’s face. His fingers catch the fabric draped across the table, stroking a smooth path along the surface as his gaze stays locked on Shizuo’s, as if he’s following a trail laid into the cloth to carry him smoothly across the room. “You never even tried to take me seriously.”

“You weren’t,” Shizuo tries again, but Izaya’s coming closer and his voice is going weaker, his strength disintegrating as if Izaya is draining the power from him, as if it is his own life force that has returned the other’s breath. “You’re...you’re a prince. A  _ king_.” He ducks his chin and tightens his mouth onto a scowl. “You have more important things to worry about than a village huntsman.”

The corner of Izaya’s mouth tilts up on a smirk. “Are you jealous?” he asks. “I’ve been under the curse of an evil queen for weeks, Shizu-chan, I needed to sort out politics before I could concern myself with personal matters.” His fingers slip over the far edge of the table and he steps forward across the distance to where Shizuo is standing at the wall, his shoulders tense and his hands slack, his fingers refusing to tighten into anger no matter how he tries to find his disobedient temper. Izaya lifts his chin to tilt his face into the light. From this close Shizuo can see the color of his eyes even through the shadows laid over his features, can pick out the suggestion of the same crimson that seems almost to glow against the curve of his smile. “I’m all yours, now.”

Shizuo stares at Izaya. Maybe it’s just that it’s been too long, that the passage of weeks has dulled his recognition of the other’s teasing, of the mockery on his voice, but he can find nothing but sincerity at the curve of Izaya’s mouth. His gaze lingers there, holding to the shape of Izaya’s smile as he struggles for words. “Are you teasing me again?”

Izaya’s smile tightens at the corner. “Only one way to find out.” He lifts his hand to touch his fingertips to Shizuo’s cheek and stroke down along the line of the other’s jaw. His lashes dip over dark weight, his mouth curves. “I didn’t take you for a coward, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo’s hand lifts from his side, raising to reach for the dip of Izaya’s waist without quite making contact. His throat works on a swallow. “What if I…” His voice dies and he has to force it back to life. “I woke you up, last time. What if a second kiss undoes the first?”

“Then you’ll have to give me another,” Izaya says. “Until I get the hang of it.” And his hand is sliding against the back of Shizuo’s neck, and he’s rocking up onto his toes, and Shizuo can’t muster any more resistance for himself. He turns his head, and shuts his eyes, and as Izaya’s mouth finds his his hand catches against the other’s back. Izaya’s lips fit against his own, the two of them falling into perfect alignment; and then Shizuo feels Izaya stiffen, and he’s catching a breath of horror and reaching to seize Izaya in his arms before he has a chance to collapse back to the floor. He clutches Izaya against him, his heart speeding on panic, and it’s then that he feels the arms wrapped around his neck, and hears the sound of Izaya’s laugh falling hot just against his ear.

“Just kidding, Shizu-chan,” he says, and catches the edges of his teeth against the bottom curve of Shizuo’s ear. Shizuo blinks, caught off-guard by this reversal of his expectation; and then long-absent heat roars to life in him, and he’s turning in towards Izaya with a growl tearing at the back of his throat. Izaya laughs, bright as a bell even as Shizuo seizes around his waist to shove him off his feet and back against the wall, and his hands are cradling Shizuo’s face as quickly as Shizuo leans back in over him, as if he’s reading desire from the anger in Shizuo’s shoulders. Shizuo scowls at him, grimacing himself into the relief of temper; and Izaya tips his head back against the wall, and Shizuo’s mouth is crushing down against the other’s smile without bothering to give voice to any of the fury he had intended. Izaya parts his lips under Shizuo’s, giving up the heat of his mouth with a sound like a moan, and when Shizuo catches Izaya’s head to tilt him back for the press of his tongue against the other’s mouth he finds his anger melted into desperate want by the heat of Izaya’s lips upon his own.


	22. Enraptured

They leave the room, eventually.

Shizuo doesn’t pay attention to how. His world has been contained by the same four walls for weeks; he wouldn’t feel the weight of them as anything but familiar, if he were sparing the least focus for his surroundings. But his life has drawn in once again, narrowing itself to the single subject of the man in his arms, and the hands in his hair, and the lips against his, and Shizuo doesn’t think he could bother with the least attention to anything else even if he had the presence of mind to think of it. His whole focus is turned onto Izaya, his body guided by the simplicity of straightforward instinct to hold, and kiss, and  _ want_, as a craving as strong as that for air urges him as close to Izaya as he can get. When Izaya moves Shizuo follows, stumbling over the smooth-swept palace floors with no more attention for the passage through the doorway than that down the corridor, and when Izaya reaches to pull open a handle Shizuo only notices for the absence of the grip fisted into his hair. That hold returns as soon as they cross into another room, brightly lit and better furnished than the first, and when Shizuo groans against Izaya’s mouth and reaches to brace his palm at the other’s back Izaya arches in to meet him, his whole body curving into fluid grace to urge close against the weight of Shizuo’s clothes.

“You saved the kingdom, Shizu-chan,” Izaya says, purring the words so close to Shizuo’s mouth that Shizuo feels the heat of their sound better than he hears the lilt of Izaya’s voice savoring the syllables. Izaya’s fingers trail across the back of Shizuo’s head, over his neck and beneath the loose fabric of his shirt collar to advance along the flex of muscle across his shoulder. “As king, I owe you a reward.”

“Fuck,” Shizuo breathes, his fingers curling into a fist at the back of Izaya’s richly embroidered coat. “Is that what this is? A  _ reward_?”

Izaya hums. “Yes,” he says. “For me.” He winds an arm around Shizuo’s shoulders; when he pulls Shizuo is left to take his weight as Izaya lifts a leg to catch around the other’s hip and urge their bodies flush together. Shizuo loses his breath against Izaya’s parted lips, the air in his lungs gusting free at the press of Izaya’s hips against the heat straining the front of his pants, and Izaya shudders over a sigh and rocks himself closer in a motion as graceful as it is obscene. “Accept my royal favor, Shizu-chan.”

There is teasing under his voice again. Shizuo doesn’t need to see the smirk at the corner of the other’s lips; he can feel it taut against his mouth, can taste the resonance of laughter in the words spilling against his lips. But Izaya’s fingers are clutching at the back of his neck with unfeigned intensity, and Shizuo can feel Izaya pressing hard against the proof of his own desire, and teasing doesn’t necessarily mean insincere, when it comes to Izaya. Shizuo growls in the back of his throat, a sound of instinct and want and impulse, and when he lets Izaya’s coat go it’s only so he can slide his hand down over the other’s pants for a better grip on him.

“Fine,” he says, and drags Izaya off his feet and up against Shizuo’s body. Izaya wraps both arms around Shizuo’s neck and his legs around Shizuo’s hips, submitting to the demand of the other’s hold with instant compliance, and as Shizuo braces an arm around him and strides forward towards the bed at the far side of the room Izaya turns his head to breathe against Shizuo’s hair and catch the points of his teeth just against the curve of the other’s ear. Shizuo huffs at the pressure, giving wordless voice to the sensation that courses down his spine and throbs in the heat of his cock, and Izaya groans loud against his ear and tightens his thighs to tilt his hips closer and grind himself against Shizuo’s arousal. Shizuo stumbles, nearly falling as his body flushes with a surge of heat, and Izaya purrs a laugh and nips at the edge of his jaw. Shizuo loses his breath at that, his fingers flexing to dig in hard against the underside of Izaya’s thigh, and then he runs into the edge of the bedframe and topples them both down over the sheets.

Izaya wastes no time at all. No sooner have his shoulders hit the bed than he’s freeing a hand from around Shizuo’s neck to reach down between them and wrap his fingers around the weight of the other’s belt to free it from its fastenings. He has the buckle open by the time Shizuo realizes what he’s doing, and while Shizuo is still trying to untangle his hold around Izaya sufficiently to push himself upright Izaya has slipped his fingers inside Shizuo’s pants. His touch slides across bare skin, lighting Shizuo’s blood to fire as it travels, until reaching fingers skim flushed heat and Shizuo jolts, a groan sharp with want spilling from his throat as his hips buck forward to urge himself against Izaya’s touch.

Izaya laughs, the sound spilling from his throat into a note dark with possibility. “There it is,” he purrs, tilting his head up to bring the curve of his smile closer to Shizuo’s heat-parted lips. “I knew all that temper had to be good for  _ something_.”

“Izaya,” Shizuo says, except his voice is straining and the sound comes out as a moan as the action of his hips drives his cock up into the cradle of Izaya’s reaching fingers. He pushes himself against the other’s palm, feeling the friction of Izaya’s fingers tightening to drag across him, and he groans and drops his head forward under its own weight as his thighs flex and his hips angle. Izaya’s palm is fitting against him, his fingers sliding to brace Shizuo steady against his touch; and then his wrist moves, and his hand draws away, slipping back faster than Shizuo can move to follow it. Shizuo gusts an exhale hot with frustration as he lifts his head to glare and finds Izaya with a smirk already waiting for him.

“Not quite that easy, I’m afraid,” he says. “I’d prefer some reciprocity in this, after all.”

Shizuo lets his frustration rasp into a growl. “I’d get you off too.”

Izaya lifts an eyebrow. “ _My _ tastes are a bit more refined than rutting against your hand like an animal, Shizu-chan.” Shizuo bares his teeth into a scowl and Izaya shatters a laugh around the strain in his throat. “Don’t worry, I think you’ll find bedding a king at least as enjoyable.”

Shizuo’s temper disintegrates, falling free from his hold as quickly as it surged into being. His arousal is happy to make up the difference, it seems, judging from the rush of heat that jerks his cock inside his loosened pants. “What?” he says. His gaze drops from Izaya’s face along the length of his body, still garbed in his finery but looking somewhat more rumpled, now, with the effect of Shizuo’s hands printed against the fine cloth. “You want me to…”

“Bed me. Use me.  _ Take _ me,” Izaya says, biting the words into unmistakable clarity, and he tilts his knees wider where he’s sprawled out over the bed. “How direct must I make myself for you?” He lifts his chin and lowers his lashes into arrogant demand. “By order of the king, Shizu-chan, take my clothes off and  _ fuck _ me.”

Shizuo hisses a breath, feeling the force of Izaya’s words hit him like a blow that surges heat instead of pain out into his body; and then he leans forward, ducking in close over Izaya so he can crush his mouth down upon the other’s. Izaya lifts his head at once, parting his lips to make an invitation of his mouth for Shizuo’s tongue, and as Shizuo gets a hand up to brace Izaya’s head still he reaches down with the other to feel his way along the buttons down the front of Izaya’s coat. They give way to the rough urging of his hand, falling open as if they are following Izaya’s orders as much as Shizuo is himself; beneath the coat is a silk shirt, so thin it feels like gossamer under Shizuo’s hand and must be nearly as transparent. Shizuo fumbles for laces, struggling to find his way to whatever fastenings are keeping the cloth against Izaya’s skin, before he contents himself with making a fist of the fabric and dragging it loose of the other’s dark pants. Izaya laughs into his mouth, mockery clear even with the sound muffled against Shizuo’s lips, but Shizuo just growls and reaches to press his hand under the fabric and against Izaya’s bare skin. Izaya catches over a breath, dragging it sharply through his nose, and his hands lift to seize at Shizuo’s hair as Shizuo pushes up over his chest to map the shape of Izaya’s body under the drag of his fingers.

The chill of the curse that has held Izaya so tightly in its grip is nowhere to be found, now. Izaya is flushed beneath Shizuo’s touch, his skin radiating heat enough to more than match the burn of arousal that is coursing through Shizuo’s veins and fixing his cock hard against the loosened front of his pants. He’s breathing harder too, Shizuo realizes as his palm fits against the shift of Izaya’s chest; he can hear the sound catching in Izaya’s throat when he pulls away fractionally to gasp a breath of his own from the part of Izaya’s crimson lips. Shizuo slides his hand up over Izaya’s skin, pressing with care enough to avoid a bruise but enough force to pin Izaya down against the sheets beneath them, and Izaya groans and arches his back as if to press himself the closer against Shizuo’s wandering touch.

“Come  _ on_,” he demands. “Shizuo, just  _ touch _ me.” The sound of his full name catches at Shizuo’s attention, pulls his startled gaze up to seek out the dark of Izaya’s eyes; and it’s then that he sees the look on the other’s face. Izaya’s mouth is soft, his lips crushed to vivid color by the weight of Shizuo’s against them and his breathing so hot Shizuo feels it ought to be clouding to steam in the air, but his cheeks are dark too, stained with the same rising heat that is trembling through the whole length of his body beneath Shizuo’s. His lashes are heavy over his eyes, casting dark shadows over his cheekbones and fluttering at his gaze, but his attention is fixed full on Shizuo, his focus so absolute it leaves no doubt at all as to the object of the desire trembling through the length of his body. Shizuo feels his cock jump, pulling hard on the surge of arousal that rushes through him, and below him Izaya groans and tilts his hips up as if to tempt Shizuo’s touch to slide across the distance of his skin. Shizuo blinks, struggling himself back towards focus, and then he fixes his hold against Izaya’s hair and lets his hand slide down the curve of the other’s waist towards his hips.

Izaya colors as Shizuo’s hand drifts lower, the heat in his cheeks rising as if to meet the friction of Shizuo’s touch against him. As Shizuo’s fingers draw past his lowest rib he frees a hand, too, loosening his grip at Shizuo’s hair so he can reach between them and pull sharply against the laces holding his pants tight around his hips. Shizuo’s attention drops, pulled away from the persuasion of Izaya’s heat-flushed features by the hurried tug of elegant fingers unfastening his pants, but Izaya makes quick work of the fastenings and is reaching at once for Shizuo’s wrist to grip against his arm and urge the other’s hand farther down. Shizuo thinks, briefly, of resisting, of holding back from the unsubtle demand Izaya’s grip at his arm is making, but the possibility of Izaya’s open pants is more than he can even think of refusing and his body is all too ready to obey the demand of Izaya’s. Shizuo’s fingers slide across flushed skin, he turns his wrist in obedience, and when Izaya pushes Shizuo presses to slip his fingers under the edge of Izaya’s pants and reach for the heat straining against the unfastened laces.

Izaya moans outright as Shizuo touches him. There is no delay, no coy teasing: the response is immediate, flexing in his shoulders and arching in his back and tipping his hair to spill dark like ink across the sheets beneath them. Shizuo makes a sound in the back of his throat, a note nearly of pain at the heat that surges into him, but if Izaya hears there is no sign of it in the fixed tension at his features. His lips are parted, his eyes are shut, his throat straining on heat, and against Shizuo’s wrist his fingers are clenching to form a pulse of his own desire to more than answer the pull of his cock straining response to the weight of Shizuo’s fingers drawing over it.

Shizuo doesn’t want to stop. His hand is pressing against Izaya, his fingers are curling into a hold no less certain for how shivering-hot his body is flushing, and all the storming force of his own unsatisfied arousal isn’t enough to distract him from the immediate, pressing need to unfurl the promise of Izaya’s unbearable beauty into the shattering truth of pleasure, to run himself through with the transcendent blow that Izaya unraveled in orgasm is sure to be. But Izaya’s fingers clutch at his wrist, his nails digging in hard enough to sting bruise-deep over muscle working with unflinching strength to press clumsy friction against him, and when he opens his eyes the color of them is shadowed so dark it steals Shizuo’s breath from his lungs without ever touching his lips.

“Shizuo,” Izaya says, and his voice is a threat enough to match the danger in his eyes, and the edges of his nails, and the taut line of pressure along his shoulders. “Take my clothes off and  _ fuck _ me.”

Shizuo would groan, if he had the breath for it. He doesn’t -- his lungs are as empty as his thoughts, knocked hollow and aching with want -- so in place of his voice he grimaces and slides his hand free of Izaya’s pants, helped not at all by the grip Izaya is still digging into his wrist as if he is waging a war with his own impulses against the skin of Shizuo’s arm. Shizuo is bleeding as he wrenches his arm free of Izaya’s hold, his skin beading spots of crimson as he shoves himself away from the temptation of Izaya’s mouth to kneel at the bed between his knees instead, but he doesn’t notice the color any more than he feels the hurt as pain. It’s just heat, more fuel to throw onto the fire of want that is roaring through him, aching in his belly and straining at his cock and panting at his breath, as he reaches to grip the top edge of Izaya’s pants and strip them down his legs.

It’s a more complicated process than Shizuo had expected. Izaya is still wearing his boots, as it turns out, elegant black things polished to a sheen Shizuo’s own shoes have never held even in the first moment of their existence, and his pants gets tangled around his knees before Shizuo can collect himself enough to drag at the laces and pull the supple leather free of Izaya’s feet. Izaya doesn’t wait; he pushes to sit himself up on the bed while Shizuo is struggling, shrugging his coat free of his shoulders so he can toss it over the bed with a disregard for its value that speaks to his position more clearly than anything else. Shizuo has his boots off by then, very shortly followed by the tight hold of his pants, and when Izaya reaches for his shirt Shizuo beats him to it, his hands fitting beneath the loose fall of silk to push it up and bare his skin for the light as well as Shizuo’s touch. Izaya submits to Shizuo’s efforts, flickering a smile Shizuo glimpses as he pushes the cloth up and over Izaya’s head, and then the shirt is free and Izaya is shaking his hair back from his face and the light is kissing all his bare skin, shoulder and stomach and ankle and thigh all gilded to glowing illumination that draws Shizuo’s eyes and steals his breath at the same time.

Izaya doesn’t give him a chance to catch his breath back. He reaches out immediately, as soon as his hands are free of his sleeves, to side his fingers into Shizuo’s hair and draw forward across the weight of the sheets. His knee braces at Shizuo’s hip, pressing hard against the loose of the other’s pants, and then Izaya’s on top of him, sliding himself forward to fit the graceful length of his body close against Shizuo’s chest and over his lap. His knees set at Shizuo’s hips, his back arches to urge him into curving closeness, and Shizuo groans and clutches at bare skin to steady himself as Izaya rocks forward to grind against Shizuo’s cock straining against the open front of his pants.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Shizuo manages past teeth set tight on the surge of arousal tight in his thighs and aching at his cock.

“Mm,” Izaya hums. “Yes please” and his mouth is pressing against Shizuo’s, his lips stifling any more coherent protest Shizuo might be struggling towards. Shizuo groans, his hand sliding down Izaya’s back to hold the fit of their bodies together, and Izaya takes the opportunity to slide his tongue past Shizuo’s lips and into the heat of his mouth. Shizuo can taste Izaya’s tongue against his own, can smell the spicy-sweet of the other’s skin in the heated air, can feel the weight of Izaya’s arousal pressing against him, and then Izaya’s hand fits to the back of his neck, and Izaya tips himself back, and Shizuo comes forward to follow the draw of the other’s body and pin him to the sheets.

It’s difficult to reclaim focus for himself. Izaya is a distraction at any time, in any situation; like this, with his thighs open around Shizuo’s hips and his body curving up to meet the weight of Shizuo’s atop him, it’s all Shizuo can do to master the innate instinct telling him to take, to claim, to fix his hand at Izaya’s hip and demand satisfaction for himself from the grip of the other’s body. But Izaya has more attention to spare, it seems, because he’s reaching out past the mattress that has become the entirety of Shizuo’s world, extending one pale arm past the shadow of Shizuo leaning over him to reach for a fist-sized jar set upright at the far edge of the well-polished table. The motion pulls Shizuo’s gaze with it, after a moment, pulling him from the taste of Izaya’s mouth enough to lift his head to look, and Izaya takes the chance to reach for Shizuo’s wrist and turn the other’s hand palm-up.

“Here,” he says, and turns the bottle to pour sweet-scented oil across Shizuo’s fingers. It spills along his skin, pooling at the cup of his palm and dripping through his fingers to splash against Izaya’s stomach, but Izaya doesn’t seem to care. He’s reaching to set the bottle back down and free his hands once more before reaching to curl his fingers to fists at the loose hem of Shizuo’s shirt. “Make yourself useful, Shizu-chan, must I do everything myself?”

Shizuo might protest this particular phrasing, under other circumstances, like those where he has any voice at all to spare from the panting heat that has gripped him with the force of jaws closing at the top of his spine. But Izaya’s voice is trembling, even if his words are harsh, and the heat of anticipation has spread to flush his whole face and color the span of his chest to pink, and Shizuo is as anxious for this as Izaya is. So he reaches down instead, fitting his oil-slick hand between Izaya’s thighs to seek out the grip of the other’s entrance with the slipping heat of his touch. Izaya groans as Shizuo makes contact, his head tilting back against the sheets spread beneath him, and impulse seizes at Shizuo’s arm and urges his touch forward at once. He thrusts forward with a finger, pushing hard enough to sink the whole length into Izaya at one stroke, and beneath him Izaya shudders, his groan skipping into heights too desperate for Shizuo to mistake for anything but heat even without the tell of his cock jerking towards the slick of the perfumed oil spilled across his stomach. Shizuo draws his touch back, retreating only to gain the motion to drive forward into Izaya once more, and Izaya’s lashes flutter, his lips part, his expression giving way to surrender as readily as the grip of his body eases to Shizuo’s touch.

Rhythm finds Shizuo by reflex, laying itself into the motion of his shoulder and the work of his wrist as easily as breathing, as if his body is following the lead of Izaya’s without any effort from the consciousness stumbling slow over the distraction of arousal pulsing through him with each motion he takes. Izaya is hot under him, around him, his legs open and fingers reaching to lay paths of heat over Shizuo’s back, across his stomach, reaching to skim his chest before trailing back down to threaten friction at the edge of his open pants. Shizuo doesn’t know what he will do if Izaya draws his fingers down within the loosened fabric, doesn’t know what kind of response Izaya’s touch sliding over him might pull from him, and he doesn’t have a chance to find out. Izaya’s fingers stretch, reach, touch, but they never quite make contact, no matter how Izaya arches his back and moans the pleasure of heat to the thrust of Shizuo’s paired fingers working into him. Shizuo recognizes the teasing of it, recalls the curve of mockery at Izaya’s lips and the flutter of temptation at his lashes at his cabin, in a carriage, within the echoing spaces of the throne room; but his mouth is hot with the taste of the other’s lips, and Izaya is lying loose-limbed beneath him, and Shizuo has no doubt about the end result of all this, no matter how taut Izaya draws his anticipation. So he continues on, fitting his hand under Izaya’s knee to tip his leg up towards the pant of breathing in his chest and sliding his fingers through slick-easy motion to shudder reply through Izaya’s body, until finally it is Izaya who tightens his grip around Shizuo’s shirt hem and drags against the fabric.

“Enough,” he says, his voice purring with a heat that Shizuo can feel echoed in the thunder of his own heart pounding in his chest and the ache of arousal knotted to a fist deep in his belly. Izaya pulls at Shizuo’s shirt, rucking the fabric up over the other’s chest, and after a moment Shizuo takes the hint to slide his fingers free and loosen his hold at Izaya’s hip so his shirt can come up over his head. He’s reaching for his own pants as soon as his hands are free, shoving the heavy fabric down his thighs before he has even bothered to tip sideways and kick his boots free, and in front of him Izaya tosses his shirt aside and lifts an arm to angle over his forehead as he turns his head to watch Shizuo from under shadowed lashes. There is a smile at his mouth, another one of those mockeries fit to the shape of scarlet lips, but the heat of it coils to desire instead of anger in Shizuo, burning with such strength that it is suddenly more than he can do to fuss with the laces of his boots to free them. He wrenches at the weight instead, overcoming resistance with simple force that bruises over his ankle and aches at his heel, but he disregards the minor pain in favor of shoving his pants and boots together to the far edge of the bed. They slide over the sheets, the weight of one boot going over the edge to pull the whole tumbling to the floor atop it, but Shizuo doesn’t wait to watch. He’s turning back, twisting around to brace his knees between Izaya’s and a hand against the sheets, and then Izaya is looking up and Shizuo is looking down and there is nothing more between them but air.

Izaya curves his lips onto a smile so slow it speaks a thousand possibilities into the tense expectation of the air. “Finally,” is what he drawls, the one word dripping heavy with the same heat radiating into the space between them. He lifts his hand from his side to press his palm to his stomach and stroke down across the skin as if he’s savoring the texture of his fingers playing across his own body. Shizuo tracks the motion, half-expecting Izaya to curl his grip around the base of his dark-flushed cock and stroke up over the trembling weight of it; but Izaya’s hand slips wide, drawing down against the inner line of his thigh before he lifts his fingers from his body and extends them to press to Shizuo’s. Shizuo’s stomach tightens at the glancing weight of Izaya’s touch, the muscle flexing beneath the shivering contact, and Izaya smiles and trails his fingertips down to brush against the hair curling around Shizuo’s cock. Shizuo watches Izaya’s wrist flex, watches his fingers curve up towards him, and then oil-slick fingertips drag along the underside of his cock and he has to lift his head and shut his eyes as a moan ripples out of his chest and up his throat.

“You kept me waiting long enough, Shizu-chan.” Izaya’s palm shifts, his hand curling in to press suddenly, startlingly close around Shizuo’s cock; Shizuo’s hips jerk forward of their own accord to thrust against the slick pressure of Izaya’s hold on him. Izaya laughs, the sound shattering through whatever remains of Shizuo’s fragmented self-control, and when his hand pulls Shizuo follows its guidance to tilt himself down and fit between Izaya’s spread thighs. Izaya draws his knee up, curving himself into an arc as he brings them together, and Shizuo catches a palm against a pale thigh and presses down to urge Izaya’s leg back flush with his chest. Izaya submits to this force at once, letting his hips tilt up fractionally in answer to Shizuo’s hold, and then his hand is guiding the head of Shizuo’s cock against the entrance of his body and Shizuo can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t resist. Reflex tightens its grip on his body in time with his fingers digging in against Izaya’s bent-back leg, heat drags a ragged breath into his lungs, and instinct flexes through his body in a single, absolute motion to bear him forward and sink his cock home.

Shizuo can feel the tremor that runs through Izaya, that tenses at his thighs and arches his back and angles his head against the mess of the sheets beneath them. It’s an echo of Shizuo’s own, an answer to the sensation that rushes out and through him with such force that for a moment all his awareness of Izaya is through touch, smell, sound, because his sight has given way, has disintegrated into fragments of color, pale skin and red lips and hair dark as ink spilled over the sheets beneath them. Shizuo’s eyes are open, his lips parted, his lungs empty as his whole body thrums with the force of heat shuddering through him, and then there is the sound of a breath, shattered and broken open into heights Shizuo’s voice can never reach even with the force of pleasure, and Shizuo blinks, and he sees. Izaya is lying across the bed before him, slender limbs and flushed skin bare for the wandering path of the light pouring over him like all the gold in the kingdom, and he’s looking at Shizuo, his lashes slanting heavy over his eyes and his crimson lips parted on the rasp of his breathing and his cheeks flushed with the arousal arching his cock steep over the shine of oil spilled at his stomach. His smile is gone, the teasing stripped from his gaze as thoroughly as his clothes have been stripped from his body, and with the weight of sincerity behind his lashes Shizuo feels himself struck through the very core of his existence, as if Izaya has done with a look what Shizuo did with a kiss in awakening him to a waiting life.

“Oh,” Shizuo says, his voice dropping to balance the upward slant of Izaya’s breathless heat. “Izaya.” He wants to say more, wants to fit words to the tangle of emotion tightening around his breathing, to the want aching so deep in him his fingers are trembling where they’re pressing to Izaya’s thigh; but Izaya beats him to it, “ _Shizuo_ ” in a voice like a command, and Shizuo’s body is responding with a loyalty Shizuo never consciously volunteering. His hips draw back, his cock thrusts forward, and when Izaya arches up with the force of the sound in his throat Shizuo’s thoughts break off entirely, words vanishing from his mind as certainly as they have evaporated from his lips. He’s leaning forward, his hand slipping up to tip Izaya’s knee higher, to brace the other down into the sheets against the flex of Shizuo’s body moving with instinctive grace to drive into him, and Izaya is reaching up, his fingers finding fists of Shizuo’s hair and pulling as if any part of his strength can force Shizuo to him, as if Shizuo isn’t already tilting himself in to curve his shoulders to frame Izaya beneath him. Izaya lifts his head from the sheets, lips soft like he’s asking for a kiss, like he’s pleading for the weight of Shizuo’s mouth on his, but then Shizuo’s hips stroke forward and he falls back again, the tension in his body cut through by the full-body tremor of pleasure that Shizuo can feel, can see rippling through him. Izaya’s cock is straining at the air, caught in the open space between their bodies as Shizuo pins Izaya’s leg back to his chest and draws his own knee up to steady the force of his rhythmic motion, but Izaya’s lashes are fluttering over each thrust of Shizuo’s cock filling him and the sounds in his throat are cast from pleasure and not protest.

“God,” Shizuo hears himself saying, his voice raw and distant to the ringing in his own ears. “ _Izaya_.” He’s still moving, his body still acting on the impulse of some absolute need that requires no conscious encouragement to seek its completion, but his focus is fixed to Izaya beneath him, tracking the haste of each breath as it spills to a moan and the flush climbing from flattering pink to desperate red all across his cheekbones. Izaya’s hold in Shizuo’s hair is anxious, dragging sharply against the weight of the tangled locks, but Shizuo doesn’t feel the hurt against his scalp and he’s holding to Izaya too, one hand splayed out against his thigh but his other higher, his palm cradling the back of the other’s head and fingers set behind Izaya’s ear to hold the waves of pleasure in his features up for the illumination of the light flickering around them. Shizuo can see tension trembling in Izaya’s expression, tightening the dark lashes at the corners of his eyes and twisting his mouth towards a frown with each backward slide Shizuo takes out of him; he can watch the force of heat knock the focus out of Izaya’s pleasure-wide eyes as Shizuo thrusts forward, can see the motion of his own body spill to slack softness at the curve of Izaya’s lower lip. Izaya is tensing around him, his body gripping tighter around Shizuo with every thrust, but Shizuo keeps moving, working faster to match the rhythm of his heart pounding in his chest. He can hear Izaya’s breathing, every inhale drawn into the stark clarity of a moan, every exhale pleading on a whimper, and his lashes are falling shut, shadowing the brilliance of his eyes as his lips part, as his shoulders tense, as his cheeks flush; and then:

“ _Ah_ ,” Izaya moans, “ _Shizuo_ ” and his whole body arches beneath Shizuo’s, every part of him cresting up to span the distance between them as his cock pulses his orgasm out over the taut line of his belly. His heel catches at Shizuo’s knee, his body clenches hard around Shizuo’s cock, and Shizuo feels something in him give way, tension breaking into certainty as he watches pleasure sweep Izaya into incandescence. Izaya’s lashes fall against the heated flush of his cheekbones, his lips part over the caress of Shizuo’s name spilled to ecstacy on his tongue, and Shizuo groans surrender, his vision blurring as he comes as deep in Izaya as he can sink himself.

It’s the heat Shizuo notices first. He’s radiant with it, his body throwing off a glow that seems to surge with every tremor of spent pleasure that hums through him; but he’s not alone. Izaya is so warm Shizuo thinks he would be able to map the curves and angles of the other’s body by temperature alone without ever making direct contact with his skin, and as they are -- Shizuo’s hips urging between Izaya’s thighs, Izaya’s knee drawn up and pinned between their chests as they both gasp for air -- Shizuo feels as if he’s melting, like the structure of bone and sinew is falling away to spill his very existence across Izaya flushed to languid surrender beneath him.

It takes him some time to collect the strength to set his palm against the sheets with force enough to push himself up and free Izaya’s leg from between them. Izaya is slow to move, as if he doesn’t immediately realize he can turn himself over the sheets, and when Shizuo rocks back to draw free Izaya makes a sound in the back of his throat that is nearly protest and pulls at Shizuo’s hair to draw him back down. There is hardly any force to the tug, it’s so minimal Shizuo thinks he wouldn’t have even noticed it in the grip of the heat that brought them so breathlessly together, but with his body struggling with its own weight he finds himself toppling forward again before he can catch himself. He lands heavily atop Izaya and the bed alike, and Izaya welcomes him with an arm winding around Shizuo’s shoulders and a leg sliding up to catch at his hip. There is another span of peace, silence pooling around them like the golden glow of the torches at the walls; and then Izaya takes a breath, and speaks in something akin to his usual sharp tone.

“Well,” he says. “That’s one way to be welcomed back to life.”

Shizuo’s chest tightens; when the sound spills free of his lips he is surprised to hear it as a laugh, if one rasping rough over the echo of heat that clings to his throat. “Yeah,” he says. There is a pause before he turns his head to press his face against the side of Izaya’s neck. “I thought you would be like that forever.”

“Yes,” Izaya says, without any indication of softening his tone in answer to Shizuo’s mumbled confession. “You  _ did _ drag it out, didn’t you? I expected to be awake again within the day. Was the thought of kissing me  _ that _ dreadful?”

Shizuo frowns confusion. “What?” He lifts his head from Izaya’s shoulder to turn his gaze on the other. Izaya is watching him, his cheeks still colored with the fading flush of arousal and his mouth still soft, but his gaze is clear, his eyes bright with the uncanny self-awareness that always makes Shizuo’s spine prickle. “What are you talking about?”

Izaya rolls his eyes. “The curse,” he says, speaking deliberately slowly as if Shizuo’s confusion is the fault of his stupidity and not Izaya’s unintelligible leaps of logic. “Everyone knows those are broken by true love’s first kiss. You could have had me awake again before I hit the floor.”

“I…” There is too much in that for Shizuo to quickly make sense of at the best of times, which his current post-orgasmic haze is certainly not. He frowns and shakes his head to pull himself back into focus. “You  _ knew _ the apple was cursed?”

Izaya raises one eyebrow. “Obviously,” he says. “My cousin has never been exactly subtle.”

“And you ate it  _ anyway_?”

Izaya shifts a shoulder into a careless shrug. “You wouldn’t kiss me any other way,” he says easily. “I figured that was the fastest solution. Though it  _ still _ took you weeks.”

“I thought you were  _ dead_,” Shizuo protests. “Shinra said he didn’t know how to break it, you…” and then the rest of Izaya’s words catch up to him, and his train of thought disintegrates to ringing shock. “Wait. True  _ love_?”

“Mm,” Izaya purrs. “I suppose it  _ is _ for the best you didn’t kiss me before after all.”

“I,” Shizuo says, and stops, and stares. “How did you  _ know_?”

Izaya’s mouth curves up at the corner, drawing onto tension that pulls him with it into a slow-spreading smile. “I’m awake, aren’t I?” Shizuo frowns at that, resisting some part of the circular logic Izaya has just waved them through, but Izaya is sliding his fingers higher into Shizuo’s hair and lifting his chin to tilt his mouth up towards Shizuo’s. “Come give me true love’s dozenth kiss, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo thinks about protesting, about arguing, about retreating into further argument; but he’s already leaning forward, and when his mouth finds Izaya’s he finds he prefers peace to fighting after all.


	23. Resolved

It’s easier to breathe outside.

Shizuo still doesn’t like the weight of the castle walls. The stone presses down on him as if the palace is built upon the strength of his shoulders, as if the entire structure is conspiring to accumulate enough force to overcome even his fabled strength. And the halls are full of people, bustling with servants or alight with the sharp-edged laughter of the nobility that so crowd the expanse of the throne room and look so askance at Shizuo himself. There is only so much Shizuo can take in any given day, and he finds that limit by breakfast, most days; better to mumble his excuses and find freedom for himself than remain and put everyone around him at risk of the fallout that comes with the loss of his temper.

It’s better on his own. The palace walls are oppressive but even the enormous throne room can’t contain the whole possibility of the world within its walls and ceiling, and repetition has stepped in to make up for the lost sense of direction that always hits Shizuo as soon as he passes through the palace gates. He can find his way around by habit, now, if nothing else, and his feet know how to chart the path from the doorway to the overfull throne room through the maze of corridors to the inner courtyard where he has placed himself. The winding halls have the advantage of proving completely unfathomable to strangers, or anyone who doesn’t have the familiarity with the palace available only to the members of the royal family and those who serve them. Shizuo isn’t quite sure which of those categories he falls into and he doesn’t bother with thinking about it too long; all he’s really looking for is the spill of summer sunlight warm against his hair, and a breath of the fresh air that pours itself over the palace walls without consideration for the lines between common and crowned, and the sweet smell of early apples ripening on the branches of the tree spreading green-leaved branches to dapple shadow across the courtyard.

Shizuo gravitates towards the tree without thinking. The sunlight is a relief from the smoky torchlight that illuminates the interior of the palace but the air is still hot enough to make the stripes of shade across the courtyard deeply enticing. He loosens the richly embroidered vest he was pushed into this morning, slipping it off his shoulders to cast across the bench at the corner of the courtyard and leave him in just the silk-thin of his loose shirt as he comes forward and ducks his head to clear one of the lower branches of the tree around him. There is grass spreading over the ground, soft green that gives way to the tread of the fine boots Shizuo is wearing designed more for elegance than actual work; Shizuo is happy to drop himself down onto it, and indulge in a sigh as he tips his head back to rest against the bark of the tree behind him.

He doesn’t know how long he stays there. His eyes are shut, his vision set aside as unnecessary for his appreciation of this oasis of quiet solitude in the midst of a life that has been nothing but hectic for longer than he can recall. Shizuo doesn’t feel drowsy, exactly, and would swear he remains awake as he sits with his shoulders slumped and his head reclined against the tree at his back, but he has no guess as to how much time has passed by unnoticed when the sound of a too-familiar voice cuts cleanly through the lazy heat of the air around him.

“I should have known I would find you here.” The tone is taunting, lilting with a grace to match the motion that carries the speaker forward into the courtyard. Shizuo doesn’t need to open his eyes to know how Izaya will look, stepping forward from the shadows of the palace into the glow of the sunlight, but he does anyway, perhaps because he  _ does _ know and doesn’t want to miss the opportunity to see the light pour itself to inky dark across Izaya’s hair and set off the curve of his mouth to deep, saturated crimson. There  _ is _ a curve there, the same smile Izaya wears all the time, whether he’s holding court in the absurdity of his throne room or lifting a cup of tea to his lips over dinner or stretched out to languid comfort across heavy sheets with no more than the flicker of yellow torchlight spread over the slender length of his body. Someday, Shizuo thinks, Izaya’s beauty will stop feeling so much like a blow to the chest, will lose the edge of brutal power that always makes him feel as if he’s being pulled under the effect of a spell as inexorable as the one the former queen enacted on her followers, but as Izaya lifts a hand to hold off the blinding force of the light from his eyes Shizuo resigns himself to the sure knowledge that it’s not today, at least. Izaya tips his head to the side and lets the corner of his mouth hone his expression to a sharper edge. “You really are only half-tamed at best, aren’t you?”

“Shut up,” Shizuo says, without as much heat as he might have once put on the words.

Izaya appears not at all fazed by this; if anything, he seems to take it as encouragement, judging by how easily he tosses his head and steps forward across the distance between them. “Whatever shall I do with you?” he says, speaking lightly as he touches a hand to Shizuo’s shoulder so he can swing himself around and drop to the grass next to the other. Even that motion is graceful, elegant as if he’s demonstrating the steps of a dance that just happens to deposit him smoothly into the space against Shizuo’s elbow. He turns his head, fluttering his lashes and curving his smile in a way that carries more heat than all the glow of sunshine weighting at the air around them. “Perhaps I shall have your beloved sister-in-law design a collar that I may keep you on a leash.”

“Try it,” Shizuo growls by way of threat.

Izaya just laughs at him. “Maybe I will,” he says. He turns back to gaze out at the sunlit span of the courtyard around them, head tipped as if he’s considering the space as his body tilts to the side, seemingly of its own volition, to settle against the support of Shizuo next to him. “Getting nostalgic for your rustic life in the woods?”

Shizuo grimaces rather than acknowledging the mockery with which Izaya delivers the words. “It’s better than here,” he says. “All these nobles in their fancy clothes and none of them know how to do anything but lie.”

Izaya lifts a hand to press his fingertips to his chest. “Including me?” he drawls. “My dear Shizu-chan, you  _ wound _ me.” Shizuo rolls his eyes and Izaya drops his hand and the charade in favor of a laugh that sparkles as bright as the sunlight. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You’re spectacularly ill-suited for politicking, after all.”

“Good,” Shizuo says. “I don’t want anything to do with it.” He heaves a sigh and lets himself fall more heavily against the tree behind him. “At least no one expects anything of a common huntsman.”

“Mm,” Izaya hums. “That is true.” He pauses, just for a moment, as if he’s letting the silence ripen before he reaches out to pluck it with careless ease. “Of course, the standards for a royal consort are rather higher.”

There is a moment of perfect quiet in the courtyard. A wandering breeze slips in over the castle walls to catch against the branches of the trees and rustle them into motion; Shizuo remains perfectly still, leaning back against the trunk with Izaya’s weight resting heavy at his shoulder while he reviews the implication of the other’s words to make sure he’s correctly understood them. It takes a moment, and even then Shizuo wonders if he’s misunderstood, but the possibility rising before him is too immediate and overwhelming for him to restrain the rising tide of near-panic that is sweeping through him. “Izaya.”

Izaya turns his head to make a point of the pillow he is making of Shizuo’s shoulder. “Mm.”

“ _Izaya_.” Shizuo turns, pulling away from the support he is offering to Izaya’s position; it would be a startling motion, except that Izaya is so fully ready for it that he’s reaching out to catch himself even before Shizuo has shifted his shoulder, and instead of retreating from the contact Shizuo finds himself with Izaya angled over his lap, one hand braced alongside his hip and Izaya tipped in to gaze at him as if this was always his intention. Shizuo’s intended shove lands at Izaya’s shoulder instead, robbed of its force by the sudden change in position, and his fingers go slack, dropping into unthinking gentleness as his thumb skims just inside the collar of the other’s laced-up shirt. “You are  _ not _ going to name me consort.”

Izaya arches one dark eyebrow. “Am I not?” he asks with a presumed innocence that tenses Shizuo’s shoulders immediately. “And why not?”

“You  _ can’t_.”

Izaya creases his forehead, purses his lips, cocks his head. “I’m fairly sure I  _ can_, Shizu-chan. I’m the  _ king_, don’t you remember?”

“ _No_ ,” Shizuo growls, and tightens his fingers at Izaya’s shoulder. “I won’t let you.”

“Ooh,” Izaya purrs, dipping his chin as he offers a slow smile of possibility. “How are you going to stop me, Shizu-chan?  _ Do _ tell, I can’t wait to hear.”

Shizuo groans. “You can’t--Izaya, I’m a  _ huntsman_.”

“And I’m the king,” Izaya tells him, radiating blithe unconcern. “Who’s going to stand in my way?  _ You_?” His smile pulls wider, tugging into a grin as he considers Shizuo. “You can’t possibly tell me you want to go back to your lonely cabin.”

Shizuo growls. “At least it would be peaceful.”

“Yes,” Izaya says with relentless force. “And  _ cold_.” He lifts his free hand from his lap to touch his fingers to the curve of Shizuo’s ear, to follow the shape of it back and down to the length of the other’s neck. “Just that big, empty bed, with no one to keep you warm all through the long nights.”

Shizuo snorts. “Maybe I could actually get some sleep at last.”

“Come on, Shizu-chan,” Izaya says, still tilting his smile at Shizuo as his fingers dip inside the collar of the other’s shirt. “We both know you love me. I wouldn’t be here otherwise, would I?”

Shizuo sighs. “That doesn’t mean you have to name me your consort.”

“No,” Izaya says easily. “But I want to.” He leans forward, his hand at the back of Shizuo’s neck tightening to steady them together, and Shizuo lets his eyes shut in anticipation of Izaya’s mouth at his. It’s startling when the contact comes against his jaw, slipped sideways and away from his lips; Shizuo frowns and opens his eyes again.

“Just imagine,” Izaya says against the side of Shizuo’s neck. “Royal Consort Shizu-chan.” When he laughs the sound hums heat under Shizuo’s skin and skipping down his spine, greater even than the burden of summer in the air. “People would have to bow to you.”

“Izaya,” Shizuo groans. His other hand comes up to fit against the curve of Izaya’s waist, to pin the silk-soft of his shirt close to the dip of his body as Izaya moves down his neck and towards the flex of his shoulder. “You’re  _ king_, don’t you need to...I don’t know, worry about your lineage or something?”

“Your brother will take care of that,” Izaya says, as dismissively as if the fate of the kingdom is a trivial concern. “Ruri doesn’t want the throne but I’m sure one or another of their inevitable brood will be happy to take it on.” His teeth catch at Shizuo’s skin to dig the bruise of a bite into the other’s shoulder; Shizuo hisses more for the flush of heat this brings with it than for the pain. His fingers tighten to grip hard at Izaya’s waist and Izaya tilts himself forward to press flush against the whole of Shizuo’s chest as he breathes an exhale that spills inside Shizuo’s collar. “Come on, Shizu-chan, you know you want to.”

Shizuo growls. “I  _ don’t_.”

“You want  _ me_,” Izaya says, “and that’s close enough.” Shizuo would like to deny this, too; but Izaya is almost in his lap, and his hand is sliding around the other’s waist to fix them closer, and it seems a futile effort before it begins. Izaya draws back from his shoulder, lashes heavy and smile teasing as he winds his fingers up into Shizuo’s hair. “I promise I’ll make it  _ well _ worth your while.”

Shizuo tries to hold to his scowl, tries to keep his frustration taut in his shoulders and firm at his grip; but Izaya’s fingers are lacing through his hair, and Izaya is smiling at him as if he knows all the secrets of the world, and the closest thing to protest Shizuo can manage is a groan that he knows is surrender even as he lets it pull free.

“Fuck,” he says. “Did you have all this planned from the start?”

Izaya’s laugh is bright and blinding as the sunlight. “Does it matter?” he asks, and slides his hand up to cradle the back of Shizuo’s head. “Come and kiss your king, consort Shizuo.” Shizuo rolls his eyes, and huffs a sigh of protest; but he’s leaning in already, without waiting for the pull of Izaya’s hand against his hair, and when his mouth finds Izaya’s he can taste apples against his tongue.


End file.
